Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/44

18 18 THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW ness he showed, the fresh formations and annealings and interlockings of language which he resourcefully invented and perfected, that really give us our first absolutely infuriating idea of the triumphs he would have brought us, the work he might have done, if only he had never been drugged and trepanned and wastefully sold into eternal slavery whilst asleep. Much has been written in praise of his work ; but of his workmanship, I always feel, far too little ; never yet, at any rate, have I seen any adequate acknow- ledgment of the extraordinary perfection and tech- nical importance of his style. " More stiletto than style ! " some one murmurs, a bit sourly — but that is only the peevishness of pedantry. Shaw's prose can be used to carve creatively as well as to kill — and in other hands than his it surely will be ; whatever else Shaw has done he has hung a glittering new and needed weapon in the armoury of the arts. Con- ditioned absolutely by the special character of the campaign he had in view — submitting to every limi- tation without shuffling, and taking advantage of every licence without shame — it is the very finest example in the whole range of English letters of prose written to be uttered with physical forcibleness on the rapid levels of man-to-man speech, and yet retaining, un- suspected, all those subtle powers of balance, of rhythm and picturesqueness, whose aid must be employed before all defences can be carried and which steal triumphantly into the citadel of the mind of the hearer through insidious emotional doorways whilst the colloquialisms keep the common sense engaged. Technically, that is certainly its supreme innovation — and that will always make it an essential part of the history of the development of our English prose. The hour of oratory was over; the peroration was punc- tured ; purple passages, instead of being banners to kindle men's hearts, had become mere red rags to