imperative aims is faithful transcription of fact, it includes with this also the writer's individual sense of fact1; and this latter imparts to it the literary quality, a character and coloring due both to the intrinsic nature of the fact or thought itself and to the writer's own personality.

Both of these relations of style require a few words of explication.

Style and the Thought. It is a common notion among practical-minded people that the style of a literary work is an addition from without2; as if the thought existed first by itself and then some one who could manipulate words dressed it up for effect. To them literature seems a trick and a trade, having to do with devices and ornaments of expression, or with cunning artifices of argument. This idea it is that so often weights the word rhetoric with reproach, and casts a slur on anything that is not expressed in the plainest and directest manner. But the truth is, if in good writing a thought is told plainly it is because the thought itself is plain and simple, requiring only a bare statement for its full settingforth. If another thought is told elaborately, it is because wealth of word, illustration, figure, clever phrasing and arrangement are necessary to sound its depths or be just to its subtle shadings. To a trained sense thoughts are essentially beautiful or rugged, dignified or colloquial, dry or emotional; containing therefore the potency of their own ideal expression : his aim is simply to interpret this character, whatever it is, and by making his word and phrase correspond thereto, to tell exactly and fully the truth that lies enwrapped in it.3

1 The distinction adopted from PATER, Appreciations, p. 5.

All the

AN,

Idea of a University, p. 277.

2 See this illustrated 8" In the highest vliest literature, then, the one indispensable beauty is, after all, truth:-1 -truth to bare fact in the latter, as to some personal sense of fact, diverted somewhat from men's ordinary sense of it, in the former; truth there as accuracy, truth here as expression, that finest and most intimate form of truth, the vraie vérité. And what an eclectic principle this really is! employing for its one sole purpose that absolute accordance of expression to idea — all other literary beauties

It is only for purposes of study and discipline that we regard style as separable from thought. It is not, it cannot be, something added from without. Anything not required by the thought, brought in as a bit of finery or a mere eccentricity, betrays its unfitness at once. For ideally the style is the thought, freed from crudeness and incompleteness, and presented in its intrinsic power and beauty. And the writer's effort is not directed to achieving a style, but to satisfying the demands of his subject, in order to bring out in its fulness what is essentially there.

NOTE. In the two descriptions quoted above, while both writers deal with the same basis of fact, the thought embodied in the fact, as fits in each case the object had in portraying the fact, is different. In the first the controlling thought is simply plain information; it gives numbers, measurements, statistics, in a perfectly unadorned style. In the second the controlling thought is the beauty and impressiveness of the city; it is important on that account, and on account of its part in the story; so the style is colored and heightened to correspond.

Style and the Man.1 True as it is that the style is the thought, it is equally true that the style is the man. No two persons have the same way of looking at things. Each writer imparts something of his own personality, the coloring of his spirit or his moods, to what he writes; so that the vigor of his will, the earnestness of his convictions, the grace of his fancies live again in a manner of expression that would be natural to no one else. This manner of expression moves in its individual lines of thought, begets its individual vocabulary and mould of sentence, and is in fact the incommunicable element of style.

NOTE. In the two descriptions quoted by there is little if any suggestion of individuality in the first, because aff the interest is centred

and excellences whatever: how many kinds of style it covers, explains, justifies, and at the same time safeguards!"-PATER, Appreciations, p. 31.

1 "Le style est l'homme même."— BUFFON, Discours de Réception à l'Académie, 1753. The most famous maxim, perhaps, concerning style.

in the bare thought. The second is strongly colored by individuality; we read in it not only facts about Avignon, but the glowing interest of a man of the people, influenced by astonishment and awe. And if this is a feigned mood, still we see beyond it, in the author, a man of vigorous and penetrative imagination, whose clear mind realizes the vital contact of the soul with the world.

It is evident, then, that a man cannot obtain a good style by imitating another man's style. It is his own peculiar sense of fact that is to be cultivated, and his own natural expression that is to fit it with words. He may indeed get from the writings of others many a valuable suggestion or inspiration for the management of his own work; he ought to be a diligent student of literature for this very purpose. He may, in common with his whole generation, obey the influence of some type of expression set by a vigorous thinker or man of letters. There are styles that he may admire and emulate, one for one quality, another for another. But any direct imitation is sure to be weak, affected, insincere. one chance of success in style, as also his one road to originality, is to be frankly himself; having confidence in his own way of realizing truth, and developing that to its best capabilities.'

His

II.

Adjustments of Style, and the Culture that promotes them. Three factors are to be noted as necessary in the perfect adjustment of any style, or any quality of style, to its purpose. To satisfy these is the work of skill and calculation in any particular case; these accomplish their end, however, not as labored effort but as second nature, that is, the skill is so grounded and confirmed in the writer's whole culture that the adjustment makes itself.

1 "He who would write with anything worthy to be called style must first grow thoughts which are worth communicating, and then he must deliver them in his own natural language." - EARLE, English Prose, p. 347.

1. The adjustment that recognizes the relation between style and thought. Just as there are different planes of thinking, so there are different levels of expression, from the stately to the colloquial; different colorings, too, from that severity of word and phrase which centres in precisely defined ideas, to that unstudied ease or fervor which is the spontaneous mirror of personal feeling. Of all this the nature of the thought is the first dictator: it is from a vital sense of thought and its prevailing tone that the fitting key of words and cast of sentence rise.

The culture necessary to the perfect adjustment of style to thought is the culture of taste. Taste is to writing what tact and good breeding are to manners. Much of it may be native, the goodly heritage of ancestry and refined surroundings; but much of it is imparted, too, by one's companionship with cultivated people and with the best literature. By his daily habits of reading and conversation, if these are wisely cared for, a man may acquire almost insensibly a literary instinct, which enables him to feel at once what is false in expression and what is true: he is aware when words are eloquent and when they are merely declamatory; when a prosaic word or turn flats the tone of a poetic passage; when a colloquialism impairs dignity as well as when it adds vigor; when the unique word for a vital idea glows on the page or flashes into his questing mind. To profit by such culture is the real joy of literature.

2. The adjustment of the style to the conceptions and capacities of the reader. The need of such adjustment is suggested in the oft-made criticism that an orator "speaks over the heads of his audience," that is, is too inflexible in his individual ways of thinking and speech, does not simplify for the needs of others than himself. Every subject of thought, especially every scholarly subject, acquires as soon as it is specialized a vocabulary, a point of view, a thought

mould of its own. With these the writer moves in familiar acquaintance and intercourse; he thinks in their terms and technicalities. But the reader has to be introduced to them from outside, has to apprehend their truths, if at all, in simplified expression. Much is done by the popular publications of the day to bring learned subjects into the life of ordinary readers; still, much will always remain to be done, the problem that besets the thinker always is, how to translate his thought into the language and conceptions of average minds.

The culture necessary for the perfect adjustment of style to the reader is the culture of broad interests and of the knowledge of human nature. Every well-written book contains evidence that not only its subject but the mind of its reader has been closely studied. To the masterful writer an audience is always imaginatively present, even in the solitude of his study; he writes as if he were conversing with them, meeting their difficulties and adapting himself to their view of things. This is not what is called "writing down" to a reader; rather it is divesting hard thought of its technical dress and exhibiting it in the light of everyday standards. And it is in this direction that literature lies.

3. The adjustment of the style to the writer's self, so that it shall be a true and spontaneous representation of his mind and character. The ability to make this so is by no means a matter of course. A writer's mind may be glowing with the beauty or greatness of a truth, and yet his attempt to express it may result, with his best efforts, only in frigid and stilted language. He may in conversation be perfectly fluent and natural, may tell a story capitally or conduct an argument with spirit and point, and yet write a pedantic or lifeless style. The reason is that he has not mastered his medium of

1 "Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties." Remark attributed to Dr. Johnson, Boswell's Life.