CHAPTER VII

VARIOUS QUALITIES OF STYLE AND KINDS OF WRITING

1. WIT AND HUMOR

Writings that amuse us and make us smile or laugh have Humor. A humorist is usually a kind-hearted person, who presents the ridiculous or incongruous aspect of his subject in a perfectly genial spirit.

One of our best humorists is Washington Irving, and from his writings we may illustrate some of the common ways of presenting a subject humorously.

An author may present a trivial, sordid, or commonplace subject with the diction and in the manner suited to a serious, important one- using long words and words of serious meaning, dignified periods, and noble comparisons. He then writes in the mock-heroic style.

In speaking of Rip Van Winkle's character, Irving says:

Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor.

Again, speaking of the group of gossiping idlers in the little Dutch village, Irving uses such expressions as these:

It would have been worth any statesman's money to have heard

the profound discussions; how sagely they would deliberate; the opinions of this junto were controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village; that august personage, Nicholas Vedder.

Of Ichabod Crane Irving writes:

The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half-hour at his toilet. That he might make his appearance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse, and thus gallantly mounted issued forth like a knight-errant in quest of adventures. . . it is meet I should, in true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed.

But

We can hardly call Irving ironical or sarcastic here; he is too good-natured. He uses this grandiloquent style merely to make Ichabod and Rip as amusing to us as they were to him.

We sometimes read articles that are unconsciously humorous in the way we are now considering. During the baseball season not many years ago, a daily paper in a large city printed in an editorial and with all seriousness the following paragraph about a favorite pitcher:

And behind them stands B- D-, the man who is to base-ball what Shakespeare was to poetry, what Alexander the Great was to conquest, what Columbus was to discovery, what Whistler was to art the master.

Humor often rises from association of the subject with the ridiculous or incongruous, through figures of speech or through the connotation of words.

The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at the top, with huge ears, large, green,

glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scare-crow eloped from a corn-field. . . . He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as the horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings.

Humor may arise from the relation of events humorous in themselves, as in Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and in Mark Twain's Tramp Abroad and Innocents Abroad.

Wit is keener, more cutting than humor. "Its thrust must, then, be quick and sharp." Much of its effect comes from putting something before us in a new and unexpected light. Witticisms are produced by brilliant minds, keenly analytic. A witty remark often makes the point of an anecdote.

A king, disturbed by the importunities of an officer, exclaimed impatiently, "You are the most troublesome officer in my whole army!" "Your majesty's enemies have often said the same thing," retorted the officer quickly.

A judge threatened to fine a lawyer for contempt of court. "I have not been guilty of any such offense," flashed back the lawyer; "I have carefully concealed my feelings."

An Epigram, or brief, pointed saying, is a form of wit. It often contains an apparent contradiction.

Beauty unadorned is adorned the most.

She is conspicuous for her absence.

A Pun is a play on words.

"Thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it," said Rip Van Winkle to his dog Wolf.

When Shylock was sharpening his knife on his shoe to cut the pound of flesh from Antonio, Gratiano cried,

Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew,

Thou mak'st thy knife keen.

Romeo, pierced at first sight of Juliet by the dart of Cupid, declared,

I am too sore empierced with his shaft

To soar with his light feathers; and so bound

I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.

SHAKESPEARE: Romeo and Juliet, I, 4, 18-20.

The pun was a favorite device in certain styles of Elizabethan diction.

2. PATHOS

Humor moves us to laughter. Its opposite is Pathos, which moves us to pity and tears. The death of the gentle Beth in Miss Alcott's Little Women is a pathetic incident.

even

Both humor and pathos must occur in literature at times in the same book; for some varieties of literature are intended to picture a considerable section of life, and life offers every person both amusement and sorrow.

3. HYPERBOLE

Hyperbole means "exaggeration." It is plainly not to be taken literally, and an author using it has, therefore, no intention to deceive. He uses a strong statement to stimulate the imagination to a just picture of the thing described. Irving, doubtless, uses hyperbole in his description of Ichabod

Crane (see above), but he has chosen an excellent method to make us imagine the exceeding awkwardness and ungainliness of his "hero." "The waves smote the stars of heaven,” says Virgil, describing a great storm; and we understand that the waves ran as high as waves could mount.

4. IRONY, SARCASM, SATIRE

Irony is ridicule in the words of praise, or praise in terms of ridicule or blame. The writer (speaker) means the exact opposite of what he says; the true significance is clearly indicated by the context, the tone of voice, or in some other unmistakable way.

No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you! Job 12:2. Some boys are discussing a bright classmate, and one of them says, ironically, "John is terribly stupid, he is!”

Sarcasm is bitter irony, sharp and cutting. Perhaps the quotation above from Job has a touch of sarcasm. Mark Antony thus expresses his indignation against the Roman conspirators:

Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest
(For Brutus is an honorable man,

So are they all, all honorable men)
Come I to speak at Cæsar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;

And Brutus is an honorable man.

A Satire is a piece of literature intended to overwhelm a person or a cause with ridicule and sarcasm. Satires are not usually in the highest class of literature, because they are concerned with feelings that belong to a certain period of