Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1892 — CONSCIOUSNESS IN WRITING. [ARTICLE]

CONSCIOUSNESS IN WRITING.

lelf-Contclouineu Makes You a Poor Writer and a Bad Speaker. Richard Grant White writes: As >oth writing and speaking are ths ixpression of thought through language, the capacity for the one, joined to the incapacity for the sther, Is naturally the occasion of remark, and has, I believe, never been accounted for. I think it will be found that consciousness, which generally causes more or less embarrassment of one kind or other, is at the bottom of this apparent incongruity. The man who writes in a clear and fluent style, but who, when he undertakes to speak, more than to say yes or no or what he would like for dinner, hesitates and utters confusion, does so because he is made self-con-scious by the presence of others when hq speaks, but gives himself unconsciously to the expression of his thought when he looks only upon the words which he Is writing. He who speaks with ease and grace, but writes in a crabbed, involved style, forgets himself when he Iqoks at others, and is occupied by himself when he is alone. His consciousness and the effort that he makes on the one hand* to throw it off, and on the other to meet its demand upon him, confuse his thoughts, which throng, and jostle, and crash, instead of moving onward with one consent together.

Mere consciousness has had much to do with the charming style of many women’s letters. Women’s style, when they write books, is generally bad, with all the varieties of badness; but their epistolary style is as generally excellent in all ways of excellence. A letter written by a bright, cultivated woman—and she need not be a highly educated ox ? much instructed women, but merely one whose intercourse is with cultivated people—and written merely to tell you something that interests her and that she wishes you to know,, with much care about what she says, and no care as to how she says it, will, in twelve cases out of a baker’s dozen, be not only irreproachably correct in expression but very charming. Some literary women, though few, are able to carry this clear, fluent, idiomatic English style into their books. Mrs. Jameson, Charlotte Bronte, and perhaps George Eliot are prominent instances in point. Mrs. Trollope’s book, “The Domestic Manners of the American,” which made her name known and caused it to be detested, unjustly in this country, is written in this delightful style—easyflowing and clear, like a beautiful stream, reflecting from its placid surface wherever it passes, by adding in the reflection a charm to the image which is not in the object, and distorting only when it is dimpled by gayety or crisped by a flow of satire or a ripple of humor. It is worth reading only for its style. It may be studied to advantrge and emulated but not imitated, for all about it that is worthy of emulation is inimitable. Mr. Anthony Trollope’s mastery of our language was inherited, but he did not come into possession of quite all the maternal estate. I say that Mrs. Trollope’s book had been unjustly censured because all her descriptions were true to life, and were evidently taken from life. She described, however, only that which struck her as peculiar, and her acquaintance with the country was among the most uncultivated people.