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Life of John Sterling-Part17_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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seems to have been a champion in the great cause of his time,--as was

Montaigne also,--that of the right of thought in all competent minds,



unrestrained by any outward authority. Montaigne, moreover, contains

more pleasant and livelygossip, and more distinct good-humored



painting of his own character and daily habits, than any other writer

I know. Sterne is never obscure, and never moral; and the costume of



his subjects is drawn from the familiar experience of his own time and

country: and Swift, again, has the same merit of the clearest



perspicuity, joined to that of the most homely, unaffected, forcible

English. These points of difference seem to me the chief ones which



bear against the success of the _Sartor_. On the other hand, there is

in Teufelsdrockh a depth and fervor of feeling, and a power of serious



eloquence, far beyond that of any of these four writers; and to which

indeed there is nothing at all comparable in any of them, except



perhaps now and then, and very imperfectly, in Montaigne.

"Of the other points of comparison there are two which I would chiefly



dwell on: and first as to the language. A good deal of this is

positively barbarous. 'Environment,' ' vestural,' 'stertorous,'



'visualized,' 'complected,' and others to be found I think in the

first twenty pages,--are words, so far as I know, without any



authority; some of them contrary to analogy: and none repaying by

their value the disadvantage of novelty. To these must be added new



and erroneous locutions; 'whole other tissues' for _all the other_,

and similar uses of the word _whole_; 'orients' for _pearls_; 'lucid'



and 'lucent' employed as if they were different in meaning; 'hulls'

perpetually for _coverings_, it being a word hardly used, and then



only for the husk of a nut; 'to insure a man of misapprehension;'

'talented,' a mere newspaper and hustings word, invented, I believe,



by O'Connell.

"I must also mention the constant recurrence of some words in a quaint



and queer connection, which gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive

mannerism to many sentences. Of these the commonest offender is



'quite;' which appears in almost every page, and gives at first a

droll kind of emphasis; but soon becomes wearisome. 'Nay,'



'manifold,' 'cunning enough significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's

rational or moral _power_), 'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader



as if in some uneasy dream which does not rise to the dignity of

nightmare. Some of these strange mannerisms fall under the general



head of a singularity peculiar, so far as I know, to Teufelsdrockh.

For instance, that of the incessant use of a sort of odd superfluous



qualification of his assertions; which seems to give the character of

deliberateness and caution to the style, but in time sounds like mere



trick or involuntary habit. 'Almost' does more than yeoman's,

_almost_ slave's service in this way. Something similar may be



remarked of the use of the double negative by way of affirmation.

"Under this head, of language, may be mentioned, though not with



strict grammaticalaccuracy, two standingcharacteristics of the

Professor's style,--at least as rendered into English: _First_, the



composition of words, such as 'snow-and-rosebloom maiden:' an

attractive damseldoubtless in Germany, but, with all her charms,



somewhat uncouth here. 'Life-vision' is another example; and many

more might be found. To say nothing of the innumerable cases in which



the words are only intelligible as a compound term, though not

distinguished by hyphens. Of course the composition of words is



sometimes allowable even in English: but the habit of dealing with

German seems to have produced, in the pages before us, a prodigious






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