STYLE. 343 



from the agency using it, and viewed more in relation to the reader's 

 than the writer's mind. But there is another aspect of the relation, 

 which cannot be left out without producing a result which must be one- 

 sided, and may be inaccurate. The following pages will be an attempt 

 to supply this omission by a consideration of the nature of the various 

 devices of language, regarded as the outcome of the mind that employs 

 them. 



That " to have a specific style is to be poor in speech " has not 

 been implied in the judgments which the world has from time to time 

 passed upon its greatest writers. Perhaps it would be nearer the 

 truth to say that much in proportion as an author has reached a high 

 eminence in his art, there has been found in his productions a corre- 

 sponding tendency to an individuality of expression. Is it not a com- 

 mon complaint against inferior artists, whether in prose or verse, in 

 painting or music, that their compositions lack character and origi- 

 nality ? Uniformity is the distinguishing feature of mediocrity, while 

 the work of genius is at once recognized and attributed to the origin 

 whose impress it bears. And a little reflection will show that this is 

 exactly what is meant by " style." Various tricks of voice, gesture, 

 and dress, are associated by every one with his friends, glimpses of 

 the hidden self being granted in such halt-unnoticed revelations. The 

 chief value, indeed, of such peculiarities rests in the fact that they are 

 commonly unknown to the man himself. For all of us, even the most 

 sincere, are to a certain extent actors in our intercourse with others, 

 and play a part that has been self-assigned, often without due ponder- 

 ing of the player's power. Nature, however, peeps out in countless 

 little traits of character, which find their expression in language, 

 habit, and even in movements. By what subtile union such tricks of 

 manner are linked with what Dr. Johnson has called " the anfractu- 

 osities of the human mind," is a curious and intricate question, but no 

 one will doubt the fact of the connection. " That's father ! " cries the 

 child as she hears the well-known foot-fall in the hall ; " How like the 

 man ! " we exclaim, when some chai*acteristic remark is reported to 

 us. Spite of the progress in complexity from a sound to a sentiment, 

 each obeys the same law ; and the connection between the foot-fall and 

 the foot, between the speech and the mind that conceived it, is one 

 and the same. 



Let us follow out the thought a little further. Not only, to put the 

 fact in its popular aspect, has every one his peculiarities ; but there 

 are degrees of peculiarity accompanying degrees of individuality ; as 

 a man deviates in character from the type ordinarily met with, so are 

 his habits singular to himself, till a point is reached where the per- 

 sonality is remarkable, and the behavior eccentric. Where such 

 manners are perfectly unaffected they are a reflection of a self that 

 stands alone among many, so that the common dictum, that genius is 

 eccentric, has a philosophical foundation. There is no need to linger 



