Essayist Logan Pearsall Smith (remembered today for such collections as All Trivia and Reperusals and Re-collections) was one of the founders of the Society for Pure English (1919-1946). This association of British writers and academics stood in opposition to "the tyranny of schoolmasters and grammarians, both in their pedantic conservatism and in their ignorant enforcing of new-fangled 'rules,' based not on principle but merely on what has come to be considered 'correct' usage."
In these excerpts from "Fine Writing," originally published in 1936 as a Society tract, Smith argues that the art of writing imaginative prose can be learned "by any one who will take the trouble."
Fine Writing
by Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
I
The literary aspirants, of whom the world seems full to-day, are not lacking in advisers to guide their youthful pens and to warn them of the perils in their path. This path is, we are told, full of dreadful pitfalls into which the unwary may be too easily engulfed. Luckily two of our best-known contemporary critics, Mr. Middleton Murry and Mr. Herbert Read, have each written books on Style, and they, as well as several members of the flourishing school of Cambridge criticism, have been at pains to place conspicuous danger-signals at the edge of these abysses.
Their warnings are directed in particular against any attempts at what is called "fine writing," any undue preoccupation with the technique of prose composition. Time spent in labouring to perfect one's style, or to make of it an instrument for the production of imaginative effects, is, Mr. Read tells us, just so much time wasted. Indeed Mr. Middleton Murry says it is worse than this, for nothing could be more dangerous than the notion that the more poetic is prose, the finer it is; this is a heresy that cannot be too much deplored and combated. "The terrible attraction of words," the impulse to use them for anything more than exact symbols of the things they stand for, is another danger; any sacrifice of sense to euphony being, these critics tell us, the beginning of decadence: "it is a step on the downward path." The histories and associations of words, are, Mr. Read says, entirely irrelevant to prose-style, their face-value in current usage being their only value. The young writer is also warned against rhythmical effects and the use of images, and is told that any conscious care for such devices, any playing, like Stevenson, of the sedulous ape to the masters of this technique, must be carefully eschewed; though Mr. Read more generously admits that "less talented writers like Stevenson and Gibbon" may indeed set themselves a standard in this fashion and feeble-mindedly ape it if they like.
Now all this preaching about dangers and decadence, and even "downright wickedness," may seem to some of us uncalled for at the present time. There was supposed, indeed, about forty or fifty years ago, to exist somewhere a little cenacle of ill-conditioned people, who were addicted to the fabrication of prose-patterns out of far-fetched and jewel-tinted words; and it was felt at the time, as I remember, that the police should be called upon to put a stop to their activities. I myself was not infrequently warned in my youth against the example of such polishers of fine phrases; but I do not recall any precise mention of the names of these miscreants, nor did I ever become aware of the least signs of their baleful influence upon contemporary letters. I used, indeed, to wonder sometimes whether granted their existence what might be wrong with them was not so much what they did, but the fact that they did it badly.
However that may be--and the whole affair still remains one of considerable obscurity--I cannot believe that this danger can be counted among the perils that are now threatening our civilization. Does any one seriously suppose that the youth of the present day are in the least tempted to retire to lonely garrets, to ascend stylite or stylistic columns, in order to spend laborious years in meditating the thankless Muse of Prose? Since, however, so large a part of criticism consists in repeating what has been said by former critics, may it not be that the battle cries I have quoted are due to the fact that our modern critics are still engaged in a conflict with these defunct and, it may be, imaginary bogeys? And anyhow, suppose that there are still among us persons who feel an inclination to spend their lives in the study of perfection, do they deserve to be so severely warned and reprobated? Though they may be devoting themselves to an obscure and derided occupation, does not their enthusiasm, when compared with other forms of fascist and fanatical activities, seem almost innocuous after all? The fever of perfection is not catching; and if it be foolish for these astrophils to hitch their wagons (in Emerson's phrase) to this remotely glittering star, surely they cannot reasonably be supposed to inflict any serious damage on the solar system and the general scheme of things.
II
If, however, this modern outcry be something more than an echo from half-forgotten battles, how can its emphasis be explained? May it be accounted for by the fact that the spirit of Puritanism, having been banished from the province of moral conduct, has found a refuge among the arts? Do these critics of the art of writing, like certain critics of other arts, occupy themselves with the craft of literary composition because they think it wrong? "Treating your adversary with respect," Dr. Johnson once remarked, with more candour than good feeling, "is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled"; and since my pen shows itself not disinclined to engage in a controversy on this subject, I shall permit it to make to our modern critics, especially of the Cambridge school, a few suggestions which are not amiable, and are perhaps unfair.
Continued on page two
