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248 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
come short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the
epistolary style
of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller
Botta, 3 because of " the difficulty of understanding it; there
was," he said, " but one person at Jidda who was capable of
understanding and explaining the Pasha's correspondence."
A man's whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It
is its net result. Every sentence is* the result of a long probation.
Where shall we look for standard English but to the
words of a standard man? The word which is best said
came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a
deed which the speaker could have better done. Nay,
almost it
must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity,
even by some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some
captive knight, after all. And perhaps the fates had such a
design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly with the substance
of life and experience, they made him a fast prisoner,
and compelled him to make his words his deeds, and transfer
to his expression the emphasis and sincerity of his action.
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly
out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. We are
amused to read how Ben Jonson engaged that the dull
masks with which the royal family and nobility were to
entertained should be " grounded upon antiquity
learning." Can there be any greater reproach
be
and solid
thai* an idle
learning ? Learn to split wood, at least. The necessity of
labor and conversation with many men and things, to the
scholar is rarely well remembered; steady
labor with the
hands, which engrosses the attention also, is
unquestionably
the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out
of one's style, both of speaking and writing. If he has
worked hard from morning till night, though he may have
grieved that he could not be watching the train of his thoughts
during that time, yet the few hasty lines which at evening