'To Have Something to Say'

“It might be too much to say that no one who cannot write prose should be allowed to write verse, but certainly no one should be admitted to any of those myriad courses which purport to teach the writing of verse, until he has read at least one book each of Swift and Defoe and can write a page which is not too utterly disgraceful by their standards.”

When writing prose, the supreme virtue is most often clarity, a quality embodied in the writings of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and Daniel Defoe (1660-1731). Apprentice writers still learning the trade can challenge themselves to write as precisely and plainly as these masters. Begin with this assumption: I want you to understand something. I don’t want to confuse you, nor do I want to be misunderstood. Too many words, too few words, poorly chosen words – all can result in a chaos of sense. As Swift put its “A Letter to a Young Clergyman,” written in 1719: “Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.” Once the basics are incorporated, you can write as eloquently as you wish. Think of the first step as erecting a scaffolding of sense, so individual style can then flourish. Consider this from the sermon “On Brotherly Love” preached by Swift in 1717:  

 

“I shall mention but one ill consequence more, which attends our want of brotherly love; that it hath put an end to all hospitality and friendship, all good correspondence and commerce between mankind. There are indeed such things as leagues and confederacies among those of the same party; but surely God never intended that men should be so limited in the choice of their friends: However, so it is in town and country, in every parish and street; the pastor is divided from his flock, the father from his son, and the house often divided against itself. Men’s very natures are soured, and their passions inflamed, when they meet in party clubs, and spend their time in nothing else but railing at the opposite side; thus every man alive among us is encompassed with a million of enemies of his own country, among which his oldest acquaintance and friends, and kindred themselves, are often of the number; neither can people of different parties mix together without constraint, suspicion, or jealousy, watching every word they speak, for fear of giving offence, or else falling into rudeness and reproaches, and so leaving themselves open to the malice and corruption of informers, who were never more numerous or expert in their trade.”

 

Swift might be describing our own fractious time. That final sentence is 112 words long, punctuated twice by semi-colons and beautifully organized for sense. It ought to leave no one confused, no one uncertain of its meaning.

 

Defoe is best known, of course, for Robinson Crusoe (1719) and perhaps for A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Moll Flanders (1722). These are brilliant, entertaining proto-novels but Defoe was also a prolific polemicist who seemed adept at taking on almost any subject, for which he paid a price. He was pilloried and served time in prison for seditious libel.  Here is a passage from a pamphlet, “A Vindication of the Press,” published in 1718:

 

“First, it may be Objected that the numerous Writings tend more to confound the Reader, than to inform him; to this I answer, that it is impossible there can be many Writings produced, but there must be some valuable Informations communicated, easy to be Collected by a judicious Reader; tho’ there may be a great deal superfluous, and notwithstanding it is a considerable Charge to purchase a useful Library, (the greatest Grievance) yet we had better be at that Expence, than to have no Books publish’d, and consequently no Discoveries; the same Reason may be given where Books in the Law, Physick, &c. are imperfect in some Part, and tend to the misleading Persons; for of two Evils the old Maxim is, always chuse the least. The only Objection that I do not take upon me to Defend, is, that against Lewd and obscene Poetry in general; (for sometimes the very great Wit may make it excuseable) which in my Opinion will admit of but a slender Apology in its Defence.”

 

Like Swift, Defoe composes lengthy sentences, stitched together with many commas and semi-colons, that never drift into incoherence. The spelling and some of the syntax are dated but the pamphleteer’s sense is clear.

 

The passage at the top is taken from C.H. Sisson’s essay “Poetry and Sincerity.” As a deft master of poetry and prose, his observations are steeled with experience and common sense. He writes:

 

“The first necessity is to have something to say, but even this will be present only as an impending cloud, and to assert its necessity is to make an ex post facto analysis. The moment announces itself by words conveying a rhythm or, it may be, by a rhythm conveying a few words.”

 

[Sisson’s “Poetry and Sincerity” was published in the Times Literary Supplement on September 12, 1980, and collected in Anglican Essays (1983), In Two Minds (1990) and A C.H. Sisson Reader (2014).]