Instead of this, one gets this _precieux_ antique
style, based upon the Bible and John Bunyan, and enriched by a
transparent power of tinging modern English with an ancient and
secluded flavour.
It shows how very little surroundings and influences have to do with
the growth of an artistic instinct, because in the case of Shorthouse
it seems to have been a purely spontaneous product. He followed no one;
he had the advantage of no trained criticism; because it seems that his
only critic was his wife, and though Mrs. Shorthouse appears in these
pages as a very courageous, loyal, and devoted woman, it is clear from
the record that she had no special literary gift.
The rarity of the thing is part of its wonder. It is possible to tell
upon the fingers of one hand, or at all events on the fingers of two
hands, the names of all the nineteenth-century writers who have handled
prose with any marked delicacy. There are several effective
prose-writers, but very few artists. Prose has been employed in England
till of late merely as a straightforward method of enforcing and
expressing ideas, in a purely scientific manner. Literary craftsmen
have turned rather to verse, and here the wonder grows, because one or
two specimens of Shorthouse's verse are given, which reveal an absolute
incapacity for the process, without apparently the smallest instinct
for rhyme, metre, or melody,--the very lowest sort of slipshod amateur
poetry.
Pages:
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337