New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1900-02-03
GIBBONS BAD STYLE.
AND A CORRUPT FOLLOWING.


English, and. apparently, of yesterday ana To-
day and of a morrow seen in rather dull and
discouraging prospect. But the truth Is that
this common speech is due to the enormous IN
huence of a great author who was born IN 1881,
was for forty-seven years the contemporary or
DIR. Johnson, and died we'll within the eighteenth
century.
Whose for instance, is the use of Il expect
for conjecture referring to the past! II Is
Gibbons: Il should expect that the eunuchs
were not expelled from the palace What Is
the and which and who Of the slovenly?
and what the whose applied to 1nanimate
things by authors too fine ana 100 modern 10
write WHEREOF? Gear Of Giboons style ooth:
Below the citadel stood palace of gold. deco
rated with precious stones. and whose value
might be esteemed" etc; and "A Menapan Of
the meanest origin, but who had long signalized
his skill a pilot"
garism so much per month" instead of so
much a month" or ''oer mensem? From Glib
bon And whose is the confusion Of speech that
cannot give the word same its proper compile
ton but saddles it with a relative pronoun?
Gibbons: The Western countries were civilized
by the same hands which subdued them The
hands which subdued them would be correct.
and certainly more majestic
Gibbon set the example of this common lax
grammar: Instead Of receiving with manly reso-
luton the inevitable stroke, his unavailing cries
and entreates disgraced the last moments Of his
without expecting the approval of the Senate;
and "A peasant and a soldier, his nerves yielded
not easily to the impressions Of sympathy.
And there is nothing that CGibbon always says
which, terate politeness is so fond Of as this
unconstructed and decorated phrase. Gibbons
literature scholarly. and these errors of his
alter little nothing Of the honor due to his
eminent elegance Of style. But It was these
laxities that took the public taste nightly and
- u.aC Tho ..corrunt foIlovire.' ~ tbie aDostIa
that set the fashion Of animated strut Of
style-a strut that was animated in its day and
soon grew inanimate the original authentic
Gibbon never does His own narrative never
fails to reply to a perpetual stimulation.
But to deal with the rest Of the grammatical
Ill example, left to unlucky generations from the
very middle of the century OF proprety and
made so much our own 1t is very modern TO
than two things and 1t is pure Gibbon: all the
more conspicuous Gibbon dearly loves the
sound OF three: The policy of the Senate, the
active emulation of the consuls and the mar
tial enthusiasm of the people, The undertake
ing became more difficult the event more doubt
full, and the possession more precarious" But
the three go i'll with either: Either food
plumber or glory: "either salt, oil, wood"
The generals either respected by their
troops. admired for valOr, or beloved for
frankness and generosity
Finally for a very little and silly blunder
what is more modern and current and popular
than this: "Magnus. with four thousand Of his
supposed accOmplices, were put TO death?" And
even this is GibbOn.
To have done with mere grammar there is
surely no author in the history Of our literature
who has imposed a manner of writing
upon q willing people. He changed a hundred
years Of English prose. The wrecks of his style
have encountered the nation. Changes that have
been ascribed to Johnson were his doing and not
Johnson3.
He belonged 20 the eighteenth century; but
the nineteenth century belonged to him, because
he possessed it. That is WHY he and his Eng
lish thus modern; the times became con-
formed to him; and he himself age-not
his own age, but that which succeeded and ad-
mired him.
1t was to the broad face Of establishment that
Gibbon addressed his phrase. That shortened
sentence for it was he who shortened the SEN
tence, and Macaulay did but initiate his full
stops for the peuses Of historical surprise)
TO strike and TO demonstrate, and this with
gesture constantly renewed Suspicion was
equivalent 20 proof. Trial to condemnation"
The strict economy Of Vespasian was the source
Of his magnifcance. The works of Trajan bear
the stamp of his genius" His, too, is the full
ceremony Of the ushering phrase: 1T is easier
TO deplOre the fate, than to describe the actual
condition. OF Corsica" His too. the latter and
the former" which became a favorite fashion
oh, do not condemn me TO the latterl' exclaims
lover in one Of Mrs. Inchbald's stories, after
statement OF his hopes and fears; and this
wreckage Of Gibbon. "Peruse' is his verb and
extensive a most favorite adjective. To him
w owe the mask Of hypocrisy" and the voice
Of flattery." It is not his fault that posterity
divided that property SO lavishly among them
selves.
And yet is there no fault in his own frJe,d
prodigality? Take this sentence in all its splen-
dor: The Tyber rolled at the foot Of the seven
the Latins. and the Volsci from that river 70
the frontiers Of Naples was the theatre OF her
Ihiant victories And this: "A distant hope the
chlIu OF ratterlng prophecy" This all-fnhuman
image reminds US, by contrast Of Shelley who
often has this figure of child and never. how
ever remote the thought, without a sense NJ
chlldhood. So cold is GibbOn that when the In
cessant stimulation of his rhetorical intantio,
spurs MN 10 describe a murder thus: "A thou
sdnu SWORDS were plunged at once into the
bosom OF the unfortunate Probus we are
moved to tell him trivally that he exageerstes
me unfortunate Probus" is the model of a
sentence that sometimes becomes rnonotonoue
even with the carefully various Cihbor. ."Tba
pruaehJ AIucuS begins a phrase and the
equitable Nerva passes ii to ct he cautions
Athenian, and then again to the eenaro,,s
Atticus His is frgidity that deals broadly
with massacre and the sack of cities A nd Trot9y
amid these generalities as it were invisible mn
less viewed from afar, he suddenly nIIcks ne
this mans smile" or that MAJ, 81 -, - :,
Whatever Gibbons race there never vas a
writer so exceedingly Latin in spirit
10 view by the way, is one OF his favorite
verbs: viewing with smile Of ritv and in
diligence the various errors of the yuIear 'N -
and sometimes cOndescending to act p mart on
e one theatre or superstition, they concealed the
sentiments OF an atheist under the sacerdotaI
ropes READERS with a of hunor NAV
remember under what conditions Zenobia "raif
Grated the experiment; and the fatal Tnannar
IN which the BRIDESMAIDS circular Of to daIy boa
dlifused' Gas Gibbon would say the last ruins
% ms prose by post, is rather curiously illus
raleu mus: a little while ago some Infamous
race WASH was described in advertisements as a
mixture OF drugs brought across the desert by
Meet dromedaries. And here is Gibbons Zenobis
mounting her feetest dromedary"
How great, nevertheless how sonbre are the
hople haDlts or his language: THE veteran
leslons or the Rhine and the Danube" What
space, what wari ~
And when Gibbon "gratifies" these Iegionaries
the polite word does but make them more re-
mote; Alter suppressing a competitor who had
assumed the purple at Mentz he refused TO
gratIy ms troops with the plumber of the re-
bellious city So that do not forgive the
corruplers VINO so scattered the word that bur
Iesque Vas necessary for sweeping il out of the
way When MI Micawber confesses his graft
r rsss enG Iof4 OF no description he
Mr. Ruskin stu5art X 1 "a blopoI
M. hushlIl, STUDENT or Hooker in the further
and OF Johnson in the nearer past was the first
writer OF pure prose-the first by a long tale of
years-to reject the whole encun ance Of the
vain spoiis of Gibbon; yet even he has one little
Patch OF mem: "A steep bank of earth that has
neeH at az eAposeo TO the weather contains in
FEATURES capable of giving high graft
fcation 10 careful observer" It is solitary in