The tri-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1866-1868, 1866-09-18
Tri-asjetklp STANDARD.
A D;ssertatfon on Style-The Dead
c.,,I,s-The Modern Revolution.

Nf N
n,, ~, readers, there is frontispiecc cartoon
Containing portraits of the literary worthies
Who once adorned the pages OF Fr@Ser-
There YOU may see Maginn, with his nlSh
shoulders and three decanters before MIN
Proctor pale as poet should be; Southey,
absorbed as if with thoughts OF lhaiaDa
CARLYLE and Bridges and Glelg; Gait WITH
glass to his mouth, and Coleridge IN Glar-
acteristic doze, with which opium might have
eome connection. About them all IS an air
of dinner and festivity. You are supposed
to be regarding the wits of duty, and the ar
fist evidently desires to raise teeilng OF en-,
Wv in YOUR mind fattering to the suDJects ana
tIe occasion of his picture The book which
this engraving illustrates IS almost as Iuli OF
eating and drinking as of jokes. Sir waiter
Scott is made to hobnob with priest VINO
possesses succulent taste 1or nsil' ana Tue
author is continually putting out gastronom-
icaI quotations which remind us of the feast
after manner of the ancients in Smollet. He
is learned on whiskey, erudlte on salmon,
profound on eggs, and has great deal to
saw concerning claret With those disgust
tions we meet criticism and politics, dash
at the fine arts and several ingenious teats
of translation. 1t may be remembered now
Christopher North INDUCED in similar flights.
You get oysters and Milton In the Noctes
Ambrosiane' and Byron, Shakespeare and
salmon in Christopher under Canvas" 1t
was considered a great thing in those days
to compose mixtures of this nature. 1t
showed you were not only scholar, but
that Latin had not spoiled your digestion
The midnight oil was consumed in LOBSTER
salad You could give classical eXplana-
lions for an appetite, and even your hghtest
hours of relaxation, passed in reek of met
aphysics and punch, were worth chronicling.
Possibly the literary scheme owed its origin
to the times when Dryden took the chair at
Wills, or farther back when johnson topped
and showed off his parts against Shak-
speare.
ave are familiar with the groups round
Walpole and Pope, round Mrs Montague
and Burke, and it would appear that copy
was really sometimes spoken at their general
iunketings But Wilson and Mahoney had
but the himsiest excuses for their imaginary
banquets Hogg wrote most indignant
disclaimer touching an account of his supper
performances given in BLackacOOd.- Now we
seldom hear of such festivals. The general
public are not over curious as to where,
when or how the literary purveyors get
ready for the market Most properly, it is
considered breach of honor for a gentleman
engaged in letters to take advantage of the
intercourse of a club in order to publish
the private habits orappearance of brother
writer. Occasionally, indeed, persons who
supply columns of gossip for country papers
offend in this particular, but as rule the
principle of decent reserve is followed.
% So the eating and drinking style is dead,
and with it the abominable custom of pry
ing for the sake of printing. What too, has
become ofthose whirligig stories such as
Maginn and Leigh Hunt used to invent, and
the secret of making which, we conceive,
was bequeathed to Professor Aytoun They
appear to have departed The fun of them
rxacY mill tho finn of mnlarn short story
as anything that may be imagined. They
were rude, rough and ready, boisterous al
most uproarious, but were bound to be funny
at whatever hazard. Have we tales at pres
ent il the least resembling those of Hood,
or of Jerrold, the Man made of Money of
the latter, for instance =? Certainly the act
of story telling has not advanced The nov
elettes in our weeklies and monthlies are very
miserable. Even at Christmas, when the
writers do their best in this department, only
a few succeed: Mr.. Shirley Brooks and Mr..
M. Lemon being notably beyond the Others.
The old Black0oOd, Fraser or Bently style of
story is dead. The professional satirist is a
thing of the past. His office has been divi-
ded, and every, or nearly every, modern wri
ter keeps vinegar cruet next his inkstand.
The album style is also gone out, and we
trust never to return. Lines written in an
album were generally the very drivel of
nonsense if published by poet, the knowl
edge of the place for which his verses were in
tended seemed to stagger muse out of all in
spiratlon If published on a poet, they ex-
hibited symptoms of the premature delivery
to which he had been subjected, and on the
face showed signs of the haste in which they
were brought into the world.
THE MODERN REVOLUTION.
But, perhaps, the most wonderful revolu- |
ton in literature has taken place with regard
to our language and the use of it. The chan
ges above mentioned occurred in natural |
or at least an ordinary course of fashion, for
letters yield to fashion as well as dress Yields |
to it. 1t would serve a man very little now
adays to give his days and nights to the |
study of Addison, and it would serve him !
less to make his intellectual whitebaits con- |
verse in the tone ofthe whales in the Rambler. |
In the wig period you should have model, |
or rather there were one or two models, and |
you should ape, measure and manage en-
actly according to them. This would be a |
good plan, If the models were perfect We
can understand, for example how such mod
els can be set up in France with the authori-
ty of the Academicians but we have no Ac-
ademy in England. Our language has man
aged to wax, and kick, and grow strong with
out the least care or nursing We can point
to writers whose periods fall with as grace
full cadence as those of Cicero, and to wri-
tiers whose sentences are as close and as preg-
nant as those of Livy. Considering that,
save Johnson's Dictionary "a single-handed
work., we have had no exact register of our
wealth in words, and no means by which
their shades and colors could be sorted. we
have reason to be proud.
"Still we are not out of danger. We take
extraordinary freedom with our language
We scarcely give it fair play. What havoc
MIR. Carlyle has made with it, and for how
many sins of others in this connection has he
to answers Raw German recruits, French
dandy phrases, words even with Latin Jack
cts and Saxon trews, so to speak, march like
Falstatf's regiment through his books, and
you are 'blasphemous to eternal verities,' or
something equally criminal and unusual, if
you do not comprehend the Iudicrous COLO
cation We confess, if such a style were de-
funct we should not regret it. Mr.. CARLYLE
is man of genius, and his whims form but
a part OF him his imitators are mostly block
heads, and the air of Mr. Carlyle's barbaric
strains is all they can pick up. The author
OF The Latter-day Pamphlets has one disci-
PIE, however, of whom he may be vain
Ihere Is the plainest evidence in Our Mutu
al Friend that Mr. Dickapo no, Loox. 4o,.o1,