STYLE. 347 



ino- what he saw after a cevtain fashion of his own, that when he set 

 himself to compose poetry he composed it as he did. Hence there is 

 a deep meaning in the saying of Milton, that he who would write 

 o-ood poetry must make his life a poem. It is by virtue of a thousand 

 minute traits of character, the gradual deposit of life's experiences, 

 that any one speaks, writes, even walks and moves, as we see him do. 

 For there must be some reason why, if two men set about describing a 

 scene, or giving even a plain, unvarnished account of some event, the 

 mode of their narration differs differs, too, in such a way that each 

 can be ascribed to its author, as we say, by internal evidence, that is, 

 by its style. While, then, no better explanation appears, that theory 

 of style may perhaps be provisionally accepted which identifies it 

 with character with unconscious revelations of the hidden self. 



This conclusion needs a little further elaboration before it is com- 

 pared with that view of what is called the philosophy of style, which 

 resolves all the devices of composition into schemes for economizing 

 the reader's attention. It is necessary to point out, and this may be 

 done briefly, how not only is style generally the impress of the au- 

 thor's self, but that there is a correspondence between the distinctive 

 features of any particular passage and the points at which, in the 

 manner just indicated, the writer's personality glides into the dis- 

 course. This is not difficult, if what has been already said be ac- 

 cepted. What, indeed, is meant by saying that an author is best 

 where his writing is most natural ? 



Is it not implied that the happiest touches are those which are 

 original that those phrases and expressions are most welcome to the 

 reader which set the matter they convey in a new light and that the 

 light in which the writer himself sees it? If the foregoing passage 

 from the " Odyssey" be reviewed, it will be found that its beauties are 

 coincident with the parts where the presence of the poet seems to be 

 hinted, and this is equally true, though not equally discernible, in all 

 writing that is at all elaborate. 



Now, how does all this square with the dictum that " to have a 

 specific style is to be poor in speech?" It will not at first sight ap- 

 pear so very incompatible. In a certain sense, style at all owes its 

 existence to the imperfection of the vehicle of thought. Were lan- 

 guage a perfectly adequate means of embodying ideas, what is now 

 to be looked for in the mode of statement would be found directly 

 declared in the statement itself. For the countless devices of lan- 

 guage, the gestures and tones of discourse, the thousand rhetorical 

 figures of written composition, are really one and all simple proposi- 

 tions not capable of exact expression in the body of the narrative. 

 They are the lights and shades of the picture, or perhaps rather the 

 finer touches, which are to tickle the imagination of the reader with 

 suggested beauties. And it is exactly in these refinements of expres- 

 sion that the deepest meaning of any author, in other words, his self, 



