And be all the birds to my ear. And here all three we'll sit in the sun, SLIP-SHOD IN LITERATURE. [David Masson, M.A., LL.D., born in Aberdeen, literature in the Edinburgh University, formerly professor of English language and literature in University College, London. He began his literary career at an early age as a contributor to the quarterlies and to the principal magazines, edited Macmillan's Magazine, from its commencement, for a number of years. From one of his essays contributed to the latter periodical the following extract is taken. His chief works are: The Life of John Milton, narrated in connection with the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of his time; British Novelists and their Styles; Bssays, Biographical and Critical; Drummond of Hawthornden: &c. (Macmillan & Co., publishers). Earnest devotion to his work, freshness, and geniality, distinguish Professor Masson's writings.] 2d December, 1822. Professor of rhetoric and English There is the vice of the Slip-shod or Slovenly. In popular language it may be described as the vice of bad workmanship. Its forms are various. The lowest is that of bad syntax, of lax concatenation of clauses and sentences. It would be easy to point out faults of this kind which reappear in shoals in each day's supply of printed matter-from the verbs misnominatived, and the clumsy "whiches" looking back ruefully for submerged antecedents, so common in the columns of our hasty writers, up to the unnecessarily repeated "that" after a conditional clause which some writers insert with an infatuated punctuality, and even the best insert occasionally. Should the notice of a matter so merely mechanical seem too trivial, there is, next, that form of the slip-shod which consists in stuffing out sentences with certain tags and shreds of phraseology lying vague about society, as bits of undistributed type may lie about a printing-room. "We are free to confess," "we candidly acknowledge," "will well repay perusal," "we should heartily rejoice," "did space permit," "causes beyond our control," "if we may be allowed the expression," "commence hostilities"-what are these and a hundred other such phrases but undistributed bits of old speech, like the "electric fluid" and the "launched into eternity" of the penny-a-liners, which all of us are glad to clutch, to fill a gap, or to save the trouble of composing equivalents from the letters? To change the figure (see, I am at it myself!), what are such phrases but a kind of rhetorical putty with which cracks in the sense are stopped, and prolongations formed where the sense has broken short? Of this kind of slip-shod in writing no writers are more guilty than those who have formed their style chiefly by public speaking; and it is in them also that the kindred faults of synonyms strung together and of redundant expletives are most commonly seen. Perhaps, indeed, the choicest specimens of continuous slip-shod in the language are furnished by the writings of celebrated orators. How dilute the tincture, what bagginess of phraseology round what slender shanks of meaning, what absence of trained muscle, how seldom the nail is hit on the head! It is not every day that a Burke presents himself, whose every sentence is charged with an exact thought proportioned to it, whether he stands on the floor and speaks, or takes his pen in hand. And then, not only in the writings of men rendered diffuse by much speaking after a low standard, but in the tide of current writing besides, who shall take account of the daily abundance of that more startling form of slip-shod which rhetoricians call Confusion of Metaphor? Lord Castlereagh's famous "I will not now enter upon the fundamental feature upon which this question hinges," is as nothing compared with much that passes daily under our eyes in the pages of popular books and periodicals-tissues of words in which shreds from nature's four quarters are jumbled together as in heraldry; in which the writer begins with a lion, but finds it in the next clause to be a waterspout; in which icebergs swim in seas of lava, comets collect taxes, pigs sing, peacocks wear silks, and teapots climb trees. Pshaw! technicalities all! the mere minutiæ of the grammarian and the critic of expression! Nothing of the kind, good reader! Words are made up of letters, sentences of words, all that is written or spoken of sentences succeeding each other or interflowing; and at no time, from Homer's till this, has anything passed as good literature which has not satisfied men as tolerably tight and close-grained in these particulars, or become classic and permanent which has not, in respect of them, stood the test of the microscope. We distinguish, indeed, usefully enough, between matter and expres- | yet ruled by a logic so resistless, that they sion, between thought and style; but no one came exquisite at once to the pen's point, has ever attended to the subject analytically and in studying whose intellectual gait we are without becoming aware that the distinction is reminded of the description of the Athenians not ultimate that what is called style resolves in Euripides-"those sons of Erectheus always itself, after all, into manner of thinking; nay, moving with graceful step through a glittering perhaps (though to show this would take some violet ether, where the nine Pierian muses time) into the successive particles of the matter are said to have brought up yellow-haired thought. If a writer is said to be fond of Harmony as their common child." With epithets, it is because he has a habit of always others of our great writers it has been notably thinking a quality very prominently along different-rejection of first thoughts and exwith an object; if his style is said to be figur-pressions, the slow choice of a fit percentage, ative, it is because he thinks by means of com- and the concatenation of these with labour and parisons; if his syntax abounds in inversions, care. it is because he thinks the cart before he thinks the horse. And so, by extension, all the forms of slip-shod in expression are, in reality, forms of slip-shod in thought. If the syntax halts, it is because the thread of the thought has snapped or become entangled. If the phraseology of a writer is diffuse; if his language does not lie close round his real meaning, but widens out in flat expanses, with here and there a tremour as the meaning rises to take breath; if in every sentence we recognize shreds and tags of common social verbiage—in such a case it is because the mind of the writer is not doing its duty, is not consecutively active, maintains no continued hold of its object, hardly knows its own drift. In like manner, mixed or incoherent metaphor arises from incoherent conception, inability to see vividly what is professedly looked at. All forms of slip-shod, in short, are to be referred to deficiency of precision in the conduct of thought. Of every writer it ought to be required at least that he pass every jot and tittle of what he sets down through his mind, to receive the guarantee of having been really there, and that he arrange and connect his thoughts in a workmanlike manner. Anything short of this is-allowance being made for circumstances which may prevent a conscientious man from always doing his best-an insult to the public. Accordingly, in all good literature, not excepting the subtlest and most exuberant poetry, one perceives a strict logic linking thought with thought. The velocity with which the mind can perform this service of giving adequate arrangement to its thoughts, differs much in different cases. With some writers it is done almost unconsciously-as if by the operation of a logical instinct so powerful that whatever teems up in their minds is marshalled and made exact as it comes, and there is perfection in the swiftest expression. So it was with the all-fluent Shakspeare, whose inventions, boundless and multitudinous, were The Prevalent as slip-shod is, it is not so prevalent as it was. There is more careful writing, in proportion, now than there was thirty, seventy, or a hundred years ago. This may be seen on comparing specimens of our present literature with corresponding specimens from the older newspapers and periodicals. precept and the example of Wordsworth and those who helped him to initiate that era of our literature which dates from the French Revolution, have gradually introduced, among other things, habits of mechanical carefulness, both in prose and in verse. Among poets, Scott and Byron-safe in their greatness otherwise were the most conspicuous sinners against the Wordsworthian ordinances in this respect after they had been promulgated. If one were willing to risk being stoned for speaking truth, one might call these two poets the last of the great slip-shods. The great slipshods, be it observed; and, if there were the prospect that, by keeping silence about slipshod, we should see any other such massive figure heaving in among us in his slippers, who is there that would object to his company on account of them, or that would not gladly assist to fell a score of the delicates with polished boottips in order to make room for him? At the least, it may be said that there are many passages in the poems of Scott and Byron which fall far short of the standard of carefulness already fixed when they wrote. Subsequent writers, with nothing of their genius, have been much more careful. There is, however, one form of the slip-shod in verse which, probably because it has not been recognized as slip-shod, still holds ground among us. It consists in that particular relic of the "poetic diction" of the last century which allows merely mechanical inversions of syntax for the sake of metre and rhyme. For example, in a poem recently published, understood to be the work of a celebrated writer, and altogether as finished a specimen of metrical rhetoric and ringing epigram as har appeared for many a day, there occur such pas- | to it, and furnished an almost continuous exsages as these:— "Harley's gilt coach the equal pair attends." ample of it in his poetry. Repeat any even of Tennyson's lyrics, where, from the nature of the case, obedience to the canon would seem most difficult-his "Tears, idle tears," or "The splendour falls,"-and see if, under all that peculiarity which makes the effect of these "What earlier school this grand comedian rear'd? "All their lore Illumes one end for which strives all their will; "That talk which art as eloquence admits "Let Bright responsible for England be, That such instances of syntax inverted to the VOL. VI. more than the effect of prose, every word does not fall into its place, like fitted jasper, exactly in the prose order. So! and what do you say to Mr. Tennyson's last volume, with its repetition of the phrase "The Table Round?" Why, I say that, when difficulty mounts to impossibility, then even the gods relent, even Rhadamanthus yields. Here it is as if the British nation had passed a special enactment to this effect:-"Whereas Mr. Tennyson has written a set of poems on the Round Table of Arthur and his Knights, and whereas he has represented to us that the phrase 'The Round Table,' specifying the central object about which these poems revolve, is a phrase which no force of art can work pleasingly into iambic verse, we, the British nation, considering the peculiarity of the case, and the public benefits likely to accrue from a steady contemplation of the said object, do enact and decree that we will in this instance depart from our usual practice of thinking the species first and then the genus, and will, in accordance with the practice of other times and nations, say The Table Round' instead of "The Round Table' as heretofore." But this is altogether a special enactment. THE GOLDEN WEDDING. BY DAVID GRAY. O love, whose patient pilgrim feet Thine altar, as of old; And what was green with summer then, Not now, as then, the future's face Shall rule the feast to-night. O memory, ope thy mystic door; O dream of youth, return; And let the light that gleamed of yore Beside this altar burn. The past is plain; 'twas love designed E'en sorrow's iron chain; And mercy's shining thread has twined With the dark warp of pain. So be it still. O Thou who hast That younger bridal blest, Till the May-morn of love has passed LONDON CITY. [Mrs. J. H. Riddell (Charlotte E. D. Cowan), born at Carrickfergus, co. Antrim. Novelist. Her first works were issued under the nom de plume of F. G. Trafford; but since the success of George Geith of Fen Court-from which the following is taken-she has used her marital name. Maxwell Drewitt: Too Much Alone: City and Suburb; Phemie Keller; and A Life's Assiz, are amongst her most popular novels.] Thinking of the City as we think of it at the present day, it seems almost incredible that three hundred years since, letters for his Grace the Archbishop of York were forwarded to Tower Hill; whilst but half that period has elapsed since a Countess of Devonshire lived in Devonshire Square, Bishopsgate-not in solitude, but surrounded by much gay company-the last lady of rank who clung to the City. There is no need to look scornful about the matter, most beautiful matron, though you may read this book in a house in Belgraviafor though the City be unfashionable now, no man may ever blot its ancient glory, or its present power and strength, out of the page of history. Not all Pickford's waggons can destroy its romance-not all the ninth of November mummery can efface the recollection of those days when City pageants were symbols of a real power-not all the feet that tramp across Tower Hill can obliterate the mournful histories written on its dust; churches and graveyards, mean courts and narrow alleys, thronged streets and quiet lanes-there is not one of these but repeats its old world tale, of misery and joy, in the ear of the attentive listener. In the dim summer twilight we tread softly through the deserted thoroughfares, feeling that the ground whereon we stand is hallowed by human suffering-by human courage-by valour and by woe! But, after all, it is around the City churches that the most interesting memories of olden time cluster. What story is there that the old walls will not repeat at our bidding? From St. Paul's down, each has its own monuments, its own records-its own separate portion of the narrative of ancient days. Close by where we are now sitting are some of these old churches, and, from one and another, the soft evening breeze brings whispers of the greatness and the sorrow they contain. Underneath the high altar of All-Hallows, Barking, lies, crumbling to dust, a heart which knew no such repose in life.1 In the same church, sleep Surrey the poet, and Bishops Laud and Fisher, who were executed on the adjacent Tower Hill; whilst a little to the north, stands St. Katharine Cree, where in (for him) more prosperous days, Laud and his fat chaplains laid themselves open to the sarcasm of Prynne, whose description of the consecration of that church will be remembered so long as for readers. the history of ancient London has any charms Near to St. Katharine Cree we find St. Andrew Undershaft, which brings with its name thoughts of Spring and May, and garlands and festivity, as well as sadder memories of the great City historian, who, at eighty years of age, begged his bread by royal licence, and whose bones were moved from under his own monument to make way for those of a richer comer. Close by there is another All-Hallows, besides Barking, where the Princess Elizabeth flew to give thanks for her release from the Towerattracted thither, so runs the pleasant story, by the joyful ringing of its bells. Almost within a stone's throw, what a number of churches there are!-St. Mary-at-Hill, St. Dunstan's in the East, St. Margaret Pattens, St. Catherine Coleman, Aldgate, St. Benet, and St. Dionsis Backchurch; whilst just beyond the wicket gate stood St. Gabriel, in the almost forgotten graveyard of which we sit. Were all the City houses-all the long lines of streets, all the closely-packed warehouses, all the overflowing shops-swept away, the City churches would still form a town of themselves. Dreaming here, we cannot but marvel what this place was like when both houses and churches were destroyed-when London was one broad sheet of flame, and its inhabitants 1 Rishard Cœur de Lion. were camped out in the open fields, looking at the ruin which was being wrought. BY LADY DUFFERIN. Do you not wonder what the congregations LAMENT OF THE IRISH EMIGRANT. were thinking about on that Sunday morning when the conflagration began? How many were making up their minds about the removal of their worldly goods-how many thinking of the great and terrible day of the Lord-how many shivering with fear-thought, to quote the Rev. T. Vincent, that into those churches which were in flames "God himself had come down to preach in them, as he did in mount Sinai, when the mount burst into fire." Doubtless some of those who sleep inside the rusty railings against which we lean, beheld these things-saw the City depopulated by plague, and purified by fire-followed the dead carts-looked down into the pits-hurried from the conflagration-witnessed executions on Tower Hill-attended the theatricals in the churchyard of St. Katharine Cree-and followed royalty, when kings and queens rode in state through the streets. The very stones in this part of London talk to us eloquently of the past. Under the houses spring the arches of almost forgotten churches -in dim aisles stand stately monuments-in narrow lanes, mansions once occupied by the nobility. The dust of great and good, and notorious, and suffering men, has mingled long ago with the earth on which we tread, and there is scarcely an inch of ground but has some story or tradition connected with it. If ghosts could return to their former haunts, what a congress should we behold in these old world streets!-Think of Tower Hill! What a regiment of headless men and women would draw up there, and march to Westminster, to meet the spirits of their oppressors! Think if the vaults were unsealed, and the graves opened, and the wrong, and the sin, and the cruelty, and the misery of the past suffered to escape into the night, what a ghastly procession would meet us at every turning! And, as it is, the ghosts we encounter in fancy, while threading the older parts of London, set us reflecting about the bodies we shall see at the Day of Judgment. Giving the imagination leave but to peep into the City churchyards-letting it have only a glimpse of that horrid foundation on which Windmill Street and the adjacent thoroughfares stand-suffering it to think of the graves lying deep under the City houses-it is not so difficult to realize what that mighty gathering will be like when the dead, small and great, shall stand before God, and be judged according to their works. I'm sittin' on the stile, Mary, The place is little changed, Mary, And the corn is green again; And your breath, warm on my cheek, 'Tis but a step down yonder lane, And the little church stands near, And my step might break your rest- I'm very lonely now, Mary, For the poor make no new friends, The few our Father sends! My blessin' and my pride: Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary,. That still kept hoping on, When the trust in God had left my soul, And my arm's young strength was gone; And the kind look on your brow- I thank you for the patient smile I bless you for the pleasant word, |