This justly famous passage, be it noted, is dialogue. To-day we especially do not dare to rise above a conversational level in dialogue. We should be accused of being 'unnatural.' Does no one speak beautifully any more, then, even in real life? Are the nerve-centres so shattered in the modern anatomy that no connection is established between emotions and the musical sense? Does an exquisite mood no longer reflect itself in our voice, in our vocabulary? Does no lover rise to eloquence in the presence of his Adored? If that is the case, surely we now speak unnaturally, and it should be the duty of literature to restore our health! Nor need such speech in fiction float clear away from solid ground. Notice how Thackeray in his closing sentence--'Frank will do the same, won't you, cousin?'--anchors his rhetoric to the earth.
We are, let it be said again, in the grasp of realism, and realism but imperfectly understood. Just as our drama aims to reproduce exactly a 'solid' room upon the stage, and to set actors to talking therein the exact speech of every day, so our oratory, so-called, is the reproduction of a one-sided conversation, and our novels (when they are worthy of consideration) are reproductions of patiently accumulated details, set forth in impatiently assembled sentences. But all this does not of necessity constitute realism, because its effect is not of necessity the creation of illusion, however truthful the artist's purpose. Of what avail, in the drama, for example, are solid rooms and conversational vernacular if the characters do not come to life in our imaginations, so that we share their joys and sorrows? Of what effect are the realistic details of a novel, whether of incident or language, if we do not re-live its story as we read? Surely, the answer is plain, and therefore any literary devices which heighten the mood for us are perfectly justifiable weapons of the realist, even as they are of the romanticist. One of these devices is consciously wrought prose. For the present we plead for its employment on no higher ground than this of practical expediency.
But how, you may ask,--no, not you, dear reader, who understand, but some other chap, a poor dog of an author, perhaps,--can consciously wrought prose aid in the creation of illusion? How can it be more than pretty?
