Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
In writing readily, it does not follow that you write well; but in writing well, you must be able to write readily.
Of all those arts in which the wise excel, / Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
It is a very good world to live in, To lend, or to spend, or to give in; But to beg or to borrow, or to get a man's own, It is the very worst world that ever was known. Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
Any writing exposes writers to judgment about the quality of their work and their thought. The closer they get to painful personal truths, the more fear mounts—not just about what they might reveal but about what they might discover should they venture too deeply inside. To write<b> well, however, that’s exactly where we must venture.
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities. The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write</p> the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more than the schedule allowed. The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be
the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs
for ten months.
To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program
team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would
also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He
was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made
the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it
added a year to debugging time.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
Besides the contemporary documents enumerated above (Koranic texts, rescripts and authentic traditions) many of the events were celebrated by poets, whose verses were ostensibly incorporated in the standard biography of Ibn Ishaq; in the abridgment of that biography which we possess many of these are obelized as spurious, and, indeed, what we know of the procedure of those who professed to collect early poetry gives us little confidence in the genuineness of such odes. A few, however, seem to stand criticism, and the _diwan_ (or collection of poems) attributed to Hassan b. Thabit is ordinarily regarded as his. Though they rarely give detailed descriptions of events, their attestation is at times of value, e.g. for the story that the bodies of the slain at Badr were cast by the Prophet into a pit. Besides this, the narratives of eyewitnesses of important events, or of those who had actually taken part in them, were eagerly sought by the second generation, and some of these were committed to writing well before the end of the 1st century. The practice instituted by the second Caliph, of assigning pensions proportioned to the length of time in which the recipient had been a member of the Islamic community, led to the compilation of certain rolls, and to the accurate preservation of the main sequence of events from the commencement of the mission, and for the detailed sequence after the Flight, which presently became an era (beginning with the first month of the year in which the Flight took place). The procedure whereby the original dates of the events (so far as they were remembered) were translated into the Moslem calendar--for something of this sort must have been done--is unknown, and is unlikely to have been scientific. Entry: MAHOMET
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities. The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more than the schedule allowed. The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. Furthermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs for ten months. To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it added a year to debugging time. -- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road: a man like Alf Romeo. -- Rachel Sheeley, winner The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never see her little dog Pritzi again. -- Claudia Fields, runner-up It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it was determined that Byron was simply a jerk. -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the worst possible novel.
"Well, it beats _me_"and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then _them_ again; and then says: "These old letters is from Harvey Wilks; and here's _these_ two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write them" (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in), "and here's _this_ old gentleman's hand writing, and anybody can tell, easy enough, _he_ didn't write themfact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly _writing_ at all. Now, here's some letters from"
Evidently Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed looking at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure to see the pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead, divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, into the sitting-room, as the airiest and largest, and the carpet had been taken away, and the room kept always fresh and wholesome night and day. At my own writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great work, first choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a chest of large tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield a crow-bar or sledgehammer. It was necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could begin; and when he did begin he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been six feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand was on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Occasionally, he was tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block; but on the whole he got on very well indeed; and when he had signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot from the paper to the crown of his head with his two forefingers, he got up and hovered about the table, trying the effect of his performance from various points of view, as it lay there, with unbounded satisfaction.
"No, monsieur, I do not know the writing, and yet it is tolerably plain. Whoever did it writes<b> well. I am very fortunate," added he, looking gratefully at Villefort, "to be examined by such a man as you; for this envious person is a real enemy." And by the rapid glance that the young man's eyes shot forth, Villefort saw how much energy lay hid beneath this mildness.
Charles Lamb is entitled to a place as an essayist beside Montaigne, Sir Thomas Browne, Steele and Addison. He unites many of the characteristics of each of these writers--refined and exquisite humour, a genuine and cordial vein of pleasantry and heart-touching pathos. His fancy is distinguished by great delicacy and tenderness; and even his conceits are imbued with human feeling and passion. He had an extreme and almost exclusive partiality for earlier prose writers, particularly for Fuller, Browne and Burton, as well as for the dramatists of Shakespeare's time; and the care with which he studied them is apparent in all he ever wrote. It shines out conspicuously in his style, which has an antique air and is redolent of the peculiarities of the 17th century. Its quaintness has subjected the author to the charge of affectation, but there is nothing really affected in his writings. His style is not so much an imitation as a reflexion of the older writers; for in spirit he made himself their contemporary. A confirmed habit of studying them in preference to modern literature had made something of their style natural to him; and long experience had rendered it not only easy and familiar but habitual. It was not a masquerade dress he wore, but the costume which showed the man to most advantage. With thought and meaning often profound, though clothed in simple language, every sentence of his essays is pregnant. Entry: LAMB
GRIMOARD, PHILIPPE HENRI, COMTE DE (1753-1815), French soldier and military writer, entered the royal army at the age of sixteen, and in 1775 published his _Essai théorique et practique sur les batailles_. Shortly afterwards Louis XVI. placed him in his own military cabinet and employed him especially in connexion with schemes of army reform. By the year of the Revolution he had become one of Louis's most valued counsellors, in political as well as military matters, and was marked out, though only a colonel, as the next Minister of War. In 1791 Grimoard was entrusted with the preparation of the scheme of defence for France, which proved two years later of great assistance to the Committee of Public Safety. The events of 1792 put an end to his military career, and the remainder of his life was spent in writing military books. Entry: GRIMOARD
BASEDOW, JOHANN BERNHARD (1723-1790), German educational reformer, was born at Hamburg on the 11th of September 1723, the son of a hairdresser. He was educated at the Johanneum in that town, where he came under the influence of the rationalist H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768), author of the [v.03 p.0462] famous _Wolfenbütteler Fragmente_, published by Lessing. In 1744 he went to Leipzig as a student of theology, but gave himself up entirely to the study of philosophy. This at first induced sceptical notions; a more profound examination of the sacred writings, and of all that relates to them, brought him back to the Christian faith, but, in his retirement, he formed his belief after his own ideas, and it was far from orthodox. He returned to Hamburg, and between 1749 and 1753 was private tutor in a nobleman's family in Holstein. Basedow now began to exhibit his really remarkable powers as an educator of the young, and acquired so much distinction that, in 1753, he was chosen professor of moral philosophy and belles-lettres in the academy of Sorö in Denmark. On account of his theological opinions he was in 1761 removed from this post and transferred to Altona, where some of his published works brought him into great disfavour with the orthodox clergy. He was forbidden to give further instruction, but did not lose his salary; and, towards the end of 1767, he abandoned theology to devote himself with the same ardour to education, of which he conceived the project of a general reform in Germany. In 1768 appeared his _Vorstellung an Menschenfreunde für Schulen, nebst dem Plan eines Elementarbuches der menschlichen Erkenntnisse_, which was strongly influenced by Rousseau's _Émile_. He proposed the reform of schools and of the common methods of instruction, and the establishment of an institute for qualifying teachers,--soliciting subscriptions for the printing of his _Elementarwerk_, where his principles were to be explained at length, and illustrated by plates. The subscriptions for this object amounted to 15,000 Talers (£2250), and in 1774 he was able to publish the work in four volumes. It contains a complete system of primary education, intended to develop the intelligence of the pupils and to bring them, so far as possible, into contact with realities, not with mere words. The work was received with great favour, and Basedow obtained means to establish an institute for education at Dessau, and to apply his principles in training disciples, who might spread them over all Germany. The name of _Philanthropin_ which he gave to the institution appeared to him the most expressive of his views; and he engaged in the new project with all his accustomed ardour. But he had few scholars, and the success by no means answered his hopes. Nevertheless, so well had his ideas been received that similar institutions sprang up all over the land, and the most prominent writers and thinkers openly advocated the plan. Basedow, unfortunately, was little calculated by nature or habit to succeed in an employment which required the greatest regularity, patience and attention; his temper was intractable, and his management was one long quarrel with his colleagues. He resigned his directorship of the institution in 1778, and it was finally closed in 1793. Basedow died at Magdeburg on the 25th of July 1790. Entry: BASEDOW
_Periodical Literature since 1830. Criticism._--One of the causes which led to this extensive composition of novels was the great spread of periodical literature in France, and the custom of including in almost all periodicals, daily, weekly or monthly, a _feuilleton_ or instalment of fiction. Of the contributors of these periodicals who were strictly journalists and almost political journalists only, the most remarkable after Carrel were his opponent in the fatal duel,--Émile de Girardin, Lucien A. Prévost-Paradol (1829-1870), Jean Hippolyte Cartier, called de Villemessant (1812-1879), and, above all, Louis Veuillot (1815-1883), the most violent and unscrupulous but by no means the least gifted of his class. The same spread of periodical literature, together with the increasing interest in the literature of the past, led also to a very great development of criticism. Almost all French authors of any eminence during nearly the last century have devoted themselves more or less to criticism of literature, of the theatre, or of art. And sometimes, as in the case of Janin and Gautier, the comparatively lucrative nature of journalism, and the smaller demands which it made for labour and intellectual concentration, have diverted to feuilleton-writing abilities which might perhaps have been better employed. At the same time it must be remembered that from this devotion of men of the best talents to critical work has arisen an immense elevation of the standard of such work. Before the romantic movement in France Diderot in that country, Lessing and some of his successors in Germany, Hazlitt, Coleridge and Lamb in England, had been admirable critics and reviewers. But the theory of criticism, though these men's principles and practice had set it aside, still remained more or less what it had been for centuries. The critic was merely the administrator of certain hard and fast rules. There were certain recognized kinds of literary composition; every new book was bound to class itself under one or other of these. There were certain recognized rules for each class; and the goodness or badness of a book consisted simply in its obedience or disobedience to these rules. Even the kinds of admissible subjects and the modes of admissible treatment were strictly noted and numbered. This was especially the case in France and with regard to French _belles-lettres_, so that, as we have seen, certain classes of composition had been reduced to unimportant variations of a registered pattern. The Romantic protest against this absurdity was specially loud and completely victorious. It is said that a publisher advised the youthful Lamartine to try "to be like somebody else" if he wished to succeed. The Romantic standard of success was, on the contrary, to be as individual as possible. Victor Hugo himself composed a good deal of criticism, and in the preface to his _Orientales_ he states the critical principles of the new school clearly. The critic, he says, has nothing to do with the subject chosen, the colours employed, the materials used. Is the work, judged by itself and with regard only to the ideal which the worker had in his mind, good or bad? It will be seen that as a legitimate corollary of this theorem the critic becomes even more of an interpreter than of a judge. He can no longer satisfy himself or his readers by comparing the work before him with some abstract and accepted standard, and marking off its shortcomings. He has to reconstruct, more or less conjecturally, the special ideal at which each of his authors aimed, and to do this he has to study their idiosyncrasies with the utmost care, and set them before his readers in as full and attractive a fashion as he can manage. The first writer who thoroughly grasped this necessity and successfully dealt with it was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), who has indeed identified his name with the method of criticism just described. Sainte-Beuve's first remarkable work (his poems and novels we may leave out of consideration) was the sketch of 16th-century literature already alluded to, which he contributed to the _Globe_. But it was not till later that his style of criticism became fully developed and accentuated. During the first decade of Louis Philippe's reign his critical papers, united under the title of _Critiques et portraits littéraires_, show a gradual advance. During the next ten years he was mainly occupied with his studies of the writers of the Port Royal school. But it was during the last twenty years of his life, when the famous _Causeries du lundi_ appeared weekly in the columns of the _Constitutionnel_ and the _Moniteur_, that his most remarkable productions came out. Sainte-Beuve's style of criticism (which is the key to so much of French literature of the last half-century that it is necessary to dwell on it at some length), excellent and valuable as it is, lent itself to two corruptions. There is, in the first place, in making the careful investigations into the character and circumstances of each writer which it demands, a danger of paying too much attention to the man and too little to his work, and of substituting for a critical study a mere collection of personal anecdotes and traits, especially if the author dealt with belongs to a foreign country or a past age. The other danger is that of connecting the genius and character of particular authors too much with their conditions and circumstances, so as to regard them as merely so many products of the age. These faults, and especially the latter, have been very noticeable in many of Sainte-Beuve's successors, particularly in, perhaps, Hippolyte Taine, who, however, besides his work on English literature, did much of importance on French, and has been regarded as the first critic who did thorough honour to Balzac in his own country. A large number of other critics during the period deserve notice because, though acting more or less on the newer system of criticism, they have manifested considerable originality in its application. As far as merely critical faculty goes, and still more in the power of giving literary expression to criticism, Théophile Gautier yields to no one. His _Les Grotesques_, an early work dealing with Villon, the earlier "Théophile" de Viau, and other _enfants terribles_ of French literature, has served as a model to many subsequent writers, such as Charles Monselet (1825-1888), and Charles Asselineau (1820-1874), the affectionate historian, in his _Bibliographie romantique_ (1872-1874), of the less famous promoters of the Romantic movement. On the other hand, Gautier's picture criticisms, and his short reviews of books, obituary notices, and other things of the kind contributed to daily papers, are in point of style among the finest of all such fugitive compositions. Jules Janin (1804-1874), chiefly a theatrical critic, excelled in light and easy journalism, but his work has neither weight of substance nor careful elaboration of manner sufficient to give it permanent value. This sort of light critical comment has become almost a speciality of the French press, and among its numerous practitioners the names of Armand de Pontmartin (1811-1890) (an imitator and assailant of Sainte-Beuve), Arsène Houssaye, Pierangelo Fiorentino (1806-1864), may be mentioned. Edmond Scherer (1815-1889) and Paul de Saint-Victor (1827-1881) represent different sides of Sainte-Beuve's style in literary criticism, Scherer combining with it a martinet and somewhat prudish precision, while Saint-Victor, with great powers of appreciation, is the most flowery and "prose-poetical" of French critics. In theatrical censure Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899), an acute but somewhat severe and limited judge, succeeded to the good-natured sovereignty of Janin. The criticism of the _Revue des deux mondes_ has played a sufficiently important part in French literature to deserve separate notice in passing. Founded in 1829, the _Revue_, after some vicissitudes, soon attained, under the direction of the Swiss Buloz, the character of being one of the first of European critical periodicals. Its style of criticism has, on the whole, inclined rather to the classical side--that is, to classicism as modified by, and possible after, the Romantic movement. Besides some of the authors already named, its principal critical contributors were Gustave Planche (1808-1857), an acute but somewhat truculent critic, Saint-René Taillandier (1817-1879), and Émile Montégut (1825-1895), a man of letters whom greater leisure would have made greater, but who actually combined much and varied critical power with an agreeable style. Lastly we must notice the important section of professorial or university critics, whose critical work has taken the form either of regular treatises or of courses of republished lectures, books somewhat academic and rhetorical in character, but often representing an amount of influence which has served largely to stir up attention to literature. The most prominent name among these is that of Abel Villemain (1790-1867), who was one of the earliest critics of the literature of his own country to obtain a hearing out of it. Désiré Nisard (1806-1888) was perhaps more fortunate in his dealings with Latin than with French, and in his _History_ of the latter literature represents too much the classical tradition, but he had dignity, erudition and an excellent style. Alexandre Vinet (1797-1847), a Swiss critic of considerable eminence, Saint-Marc-Girardin (1801-1873), whose _Cours de littérature dramatique_ is his chief work, and Eugène Géruzez (1799-1865), the author not only of an extremely useful and well-written handbook to French literature before the Revolution, but also of other works dealing with separate portions of the subject, must also be mentioned. One remarkable critic, Ernest Hello (1818-1885), attracted during his life little attention even in France, and hardly any out of it, his work being strongly tinctured with the unpopular flavour and colour of uncompromising "clericalism," and his extremely bad health keeping him out of the ordinary fraternities of literary society. It was, however, as full of idiosyncrasy as of partisanship, and is exceedingly interesting to those who regard criticism as mainly valuable because it gives different aspects of the same thing. Entry: MM