On Polish

[Footnote: 1865]

By Polish I mean a well-known, immediately recognizable condition of surface: the one that lets the inner structure of the material show itself. It is a translucent skin in which the life of the inorganic comes to the surface, as animal life does in the animal skin. Clothed in it, the inner glories of marble, jasper and porphyry leave the darkness and glow into the day; the mossy landscape comes dreaming out of the agate, and the eye of its gold looks up from the green chrysolite. The life hidden for ages under the rough bark of forest trees comes to light: the rings of lovely shadow the tree made in the dark, and its knots, where a beneficent disease has broken its geometrical perfection, gloom out in infinite variety.

Nor is polish’s revelation confined to things with varied inner construction; it works equally on homogeneous things. Polished ebony or jet gives the true blank, the material darkness; polished steel shines keen, remorseless and cold, like the human justice it symbolizes; and in the polished diamond the distinctive purity is most evident, and from it, I presume, the light absorbed from the sun will gleam most plentifully on the dark.

That polish ends in revelation is hardly worth stating except for some further revelation in the fact. I wish to show that the same truth is involved, or at least suggested, in the figurative use of the word. First, though, another remark on the definition.

The first notion the word suggests is undeniably smoothness, and that is the only idea we associate with it until we reflect. But when we consider what things are “clothed upon” with this smoothness, we find it is scarcely wanted for its own sake—in many materials and situations it is elaborately avoided—and is sought because it lets other things show themselves, come to the surface.

I now ask how far my fuller sense of the word fits its figurative use in Polish of Style and Polish of Manners. Style is the manners of intellectual utterance, and manners the style of social utterance, so they could be treated together, but it is more convenient to take them separately.

I begin with the Polish of Style.

If polish means only smoothness, there is little to say, and nothing worth saying. Mere smoothness is no more desirable in a style than in a country or a countenance, and pursuing it gains monotony and loses melody and harmony. Polish can be mere smoothness only on worthless material, and there it can be nothing else. No polish can give a production value unless embodied thought is revealed by it; otherwise the labour is lost. Let us take the fuller meaning and apply it to style.

If it applies, Polish of Style means the approximately complete revelation of the thought: the removal of everything that can come between the speaker’s thought and the hearer’s mind. True polish, in marble or in speech, reveals inlying realities; mere smoothness of sound or meaning does not deserve the name. The most polished style most immediately and truly flashes its meaning upon the listener or reader.

“Will you then,” I imagine a reader objecting, “admit of no ornament in style?”

“Assuredly,” I answer, “I would admit of no ornament whatever.”

Let me explain what I mean by ornament: anything stuck in or on, like a spangle, because it is pretty in itself, though it reveals nothing. No such thing belongs to a polished style; it is paint, not polish. If my questioner means something else by ornament, my answer must be read accordingly. It does not touch the natural forms of beauty that thought takes in speech: between those and ornament is the difference between the overflow of life in the hair and the dressing of that loveliest of utterances in grease and gold.

When I say polish is the removal of everything between thought and thinking, I do not mean that thought is only intellect, so that every form but the bare intellectual one is ornament. As well call the bones the only essential part of the human form. Every human thought is in a sense a human being, needing its muscles of motion, skin of beauty and blood of feeling as much as its skeleton of logic. Complete utterance needs music in right proportion—clear and strong in rhymed harmonies, veiled and dim in the prose of the masters—as much as correct logic and sound construction. I should have said conveyance rather than utterance, since utterance can relieve the speaker with a fancied communication while conveying nothing, as with the speaking with tongues of the infant Church—which our children’s lovely babblement probably resembles more than figuratively, relieving their own minds while, with no interpreter yet at his post, neither instructing nor misleading anyone. Since grown-up speech must mainly convey thought, everything in its style that stands between the mental eye and the thought must be polished away, that the indwelling life may show itself.

What, then—for now we must be practical—is to be polished away in order that the hidden may be revealed?

All words that can be dismissed without loss, for they only obscure the meaning they gather round. The first step in polishing most styles is to strike out the useless words and phrases. Most of what is said could be said in wonderfully fewer words, and the certainty and speed with which an idea is conveyed are generally in inverse ratio to the number of words used.

All so-called ornaments—the nose and lip jewels of style, the tattooing of speech; similes that, though true, give no further insight into the meaning; everything merely pretty and not beautiful; all mere sparkle, like jewels that lose their own beauty set in the grandeur of statues—must be ruthlessly polished away.

Also to be refused are utterances that, however much they add to the thought, distract the mind from the main idea, the life of the book or paper. The manuscript of Comus has a cancelled but legible passage which, on the best authority, would have made the poetic fame of any writer. The great old self-denier struck it from the opening speech because the speech would be more polished without it: the Attendant Spirit would say what he had to say more immediately and so more completely. All this applies far more widely in art, but I am dealing now with the surface of style, not the round of result.

I have an instance at hand from this region that illustrates my thesis as aptly as any. One of the greatest living painters, walking through the late Exhibition of Art-Treasures at Manchester with a friend, came upon Albert Dürer’s Melancholia. After a moment he said he now understood it for the first time, and explained what he saw. It was a very early impression, its lines finer than any he had seen, and he had never perceived the engraving’s intent and scope. The mere removal of accidental thickness and furriness in the lines let him see into its meaning. The polish brought it to the surface; or, for my argument the same thing, the dulled surface had hidden it even from his experienced eyes.

In short, every cause of obscurity must be polished away. The matter may have a darkness no polishing can make clear, and the thoughts may be hard to think, but difficulty must not be confused with obscurity: difficulty belongs to the thoughts, obscurity to the way they are embodied, and every cause of the latter must be removed, even in grammar or sentence arrangement. And as no ornament is allowed, so roughnesses that irritate the mental ear and unfit it to receive the meaning must be carefully reduced. For the true music of a sentence, belonging to the essence of the thought, is the herald that prepares the mind for the next thought, calming the intellect to a mirror-like reflection of the image about to fall on it; syllables that hang heavy on the tongue and grate on the ear are a trumpet of discord, rousing unconscious opposition and conscious rejection.

Now the Polish of Manners leads to more important reflections. Its ordinary use is again analogous to the preceding, but its relations lead deep into realities. For as only diamond can polish diamond, so only men can polish men; and so it was first by living in a city ([Greek: polis], polis) that men—

and became polished. Some ease about ourselves and consideration for others is needed everywhere if a man is to pass as a gentleman—all unevenness of behaviour, from shyness or self-consciousness (awkwardness) or from overweening or selfishness (rudeness), must be polished away—but true human polish goes further. Its respects are not confined to the ball-room, dinner-table, club or exchange; wherever a man may rejoice with them that rejoice or weep with them that weep, he must remain the same, as polished to the tiller of the soil as to the leader of fashion.

But how can material polish help us further? How can Polish of Manners reveal what is within, calling up the hidden loveliness of the material? Do we not know that courtesy may cover contempt, smiles hide hate, and one who seats you at his right hand when he needs your lesser help may scarcely acknowledge you once his need has passed? Are they not a putting on rather than a taking off—paint and varnish rather than polish?

I yield the answer to each question, protesting that with such polish I have nothing to do: these manners are confessedly false. Yet even where least able to mislead, they are accepted as outward signs of inward grace, so even they, by the nature of their falsehood, support my position. For in what forms are the paint’s colours laid on? In as near imitations of real, right human feeling about oneself and others as such an artist’s imperfect knowledge can produce. He will not face the labour of polishing, for he does not believe in the divine depths of his own nature: he paints, and calls the varnish polish.

“But why talk of polish for such a character, since no polishing can bring to the surface what is not there? Polishing sandstone will not reveal the mottling of marble. It is sandstone, crumbling and gritty—not noble in any way.”

Is it so? Can that be the man’s real nature, with nothing deeper for polish to reach? May this selfishness not be polished away, revealing true colour and harmony beneath? Was man not made in the image of God? Or, if he lost it, did a re-creation not begin from the point of that loss, in him in whom all shall be made alive—far from complete yet, but never to be checked? Cut deep enough into the rough block of our nature, and shall we not reach some likeness of that true man who, the apostle says, dwells in us—the hope of glory? He informs us—forms us from within.

Dr. Donne (who knew less than any other writer in the English language what Polish of Style means) recognizes this divine polishing fully. In a poem called “The Cross” he says:—

This is a higher figure than polish, but of the same kind and revealing the same truth: the divine nature lies at the root of the human, and the polish that lets it shine out in the simplicity of heavenly childhood is the true Polish of Manners, of which social refinements are a poor imitation.—Hence Coleridge says nothing but religion can make a man a gentleman.—When these harmonies of our nature surface, we shall be “lively stones,” fit for the great temple of the universe and echoing the music of creation. Dr. Donne also sees that crosses, or afflictions, are the polishing powers that bring the beautiful realities of human nature to the surface; one can tell from the peculiar loveliness of certain persons that they have suffered.

Looking a moment less profoundly: have we not known people whose best never reached the surface for lack of polish?—people who, could they only show their kindness, would make men believe in human nature, but whose awkwardness or shyness keeps the true self hidden? Even dread of seeming to claim credit for a good deed, or to patronize, can spoil the last touch of tenderness that would have been the final polish of giving and revealed infinite depths of devotion. Let the truth out, and it will be seen to be true.

Simplicity is the end of all Polish, as of all Art, Culture, Morals, Religion and Life. The Lord our God is one Lord, and we and our brothers and sisters are one Humanity, one Body of the Head.

Now to the practical: what are we to do for the polish of our manners?

Just what I said for style: take off, do not put on. Polish away this rudeness, that awkwardness. Correct everything self-assertive, nine tenths of all vulgarity. Imitate no one’s behaviour; that is to paint. Do not think about yourself; that is to varnish. Put what is wrong right, and what is in you will show itself in harmonious behaviour.

But no one can go far in this track without finding that true polish reaches deeper: the outward exists for the sake of the inward, and manners, depending on morals, must be forgotten in the morals they reveal. Look at the high-shouldered, ungainly child in the corner. His mother tells him to go to his book; he wants to go to his play. See the swollen lips, the tightened skin over the nose, the distorted, angular shape. Yet he is not awkward by nature. Look again the moment after he has given in and kissed his mother: his shoulders have dropped into place, his limbs are free, his motions graceful and harmonious. He is no longer thinking of himself; he has given up his own way. The true childhood comes to the surface, and you see what the boy is meant to be always. So the conceited man is jerky and the modest man moves with quiet fluency; even anger that forgets self, unhating and righteous, lifts the carriage and ennobles the movements.

But how far can the same rule of omission or rejection safely apply to this deeper character—the manners of the spirit?

It seems to me that in morals too the main thing is to avoid doing wrong, for then the active spirit of life in us will drive us on to the right; but I would not be dogmatic on so momentous a question. As regards feelings only: it is no use trying to make ourselves feel this or that. Let us fight our wrong feelings and polish away their rough, ugly distortions. The real and good will then come of themselves—to keep to my figure, will show themselves as the natural home-produce, the indwelling facts of our deepest, divine nature.

Here I find I am sinking through my subject into a deeper one—a truth that should be the foundation of all our building: Life is at work in us—the sacred Spirit of God travailing in us. That Spirit has gained one end of his labour, from which he can do yet more for us, when he has brought us to beg for the help he has been giving all along.

I have been regarding infinite things through one limited figure, knowing figures cannot reveal them utterly. But as far as they go, the thoughts raised by the word Polish and its figurative uses seem to me most true.