"Fools follow rules. Wise men precede them." (Query: this
being a quotation from myself, was I bound to put the inverted commas?)
Shakespeare has violated every rule of the schoolroom, and the more
self-conscious stylist of our own day--Stevenson--would be caned for
composition. I find him writing "They are not us," which is almost as
blasphemous as "It's me." His reputation has closed the critics' eyes to
such sentences as these in his essay on "Some Portraits by Raeburn":
"Each of his portraits are not only a piece of history ..."; "Neither of
the portraits of Sir Walter Scott were very agreeable to look upon."
Stevenson is a master, but not a schoolmaster, of English. Of course bad
grammar does not make a genius, any more than bad morals. (Note how much
this sentence would lose in crispness if I made it grammatical by tacking
on "do.") My friend the musician complained to me that when he studied
harmony and form he was told he must not do this, that and the other;
whereas, when he came to look into the works of the great composers he
found they made a practice of all the three. "Am I a genius?" he queried
pathetically. "If so, I could do as I please. I wish I knew." Every
author who can read and write is in the same predicament: on the one hand
his own instinct for a phrase or a sentence, on the other the contempt of
every honest critic.
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