STYLE. 



STYLE. 



8C2 



in the page cited U such as will never come into general use unless the 

 work can be made more easy : 



v =^-2^ 



v, = Tif - 10^-9^ + 8*-5 



v, = 2* 1 + 6-r 3 - lOi? + 15-r - 21 



v,- 62-r 4 - 70.C 3 + 123X 2 163-t -I- 10 



v> - _ 4403-c 3 + 8862^19810^ + 20531 



v s = 200865J. 3 + 489790* - 1169472 



v a = 187355-r- 270632 



v, = a positive constant. 



Here the criteria for x= <a , x = Q,x*= + > are 



+ H --- h five changes 



J-= 00 + + 



a:= -I + + + four changes 



x= + 00 + + + + r++ two changes. 



There are then one negative root and two positive roots, and there- 

 fore four imaginary ones. The reader will easily find that the positive 

 roots lie between 1 and 2, and the negative root between 1 and - 2. 

 The exhibition of the process, leaving out the actual performance of 

 multiplications, has 400 figures in Mr. Young's work. Fourier has 

 merely written down the derived functions, which is done at sight, and 

 formed the criteria for x 10, x= 1, x = k, x = 0,x= +k, x \, 

 r= 10, which may all be done at sight also. From this he finds that 

 there must be one negative root between - 1 and 10, that there may 

 be two roots between and 1, and two more between 1 and 10. All 

 this might be done before v, could be found and written down as 

 above. It is to be hoped either that Fourier's theorem will be com- 

 pleted by the addition of a test for imaginary roots, or that Sturm's 

 functions will be exchanged for others of less complicated opera- 

 tion. But in the meanwhile it must be remembered that Fourier, 

 Sturm, ami Homer have completely changed the aspect of the 

 solution of numerical equations : at the beginning of the period men- 

 tioned, it would have been thought too good to expect that any certain 

 nit-thud of predicting, or easy one of calculating, the roots of such 

 equations, should be found, after the failure of all analysts from Des- 

 cartes and Newton down to Euler and Lagrange, the best heads ol 

 France and England, Germany and Italy. It is a lesson against de- 

 spairing of the attainment of any result, however illustrious the 

 investigators who have not succeeded, and also against imagining that 

 the hints of preceding ages are exhausted. All the contents of the 

 present article arise out of a new mode of looking at the theorem which 

 Descartes gave more than two hundred yean ago. 



STYLE, used for manner of writing, from the Latin stylui, the sarn< 



word with the Greek crruAoj, a " pillar," or " column." The Romans 



gave that name to an iron bodkin having a sharp point, with which 



they were accustomed to write by exaration, or scratching, on their 



wax-covered tablets or note-books ; and from the instrument of 



writing, the term was transferred to the writing itself, and that too 



It-red in reference not to the form of the characters (which would 



}*een the more immediate transition), but to the mode of 



lion. Among the Romans, however, the term, in this figurative 



application of it, retained always considerably more of its antecedent 



meaning than it does with us. We say not only style of writing and 



style of speaking, but style of painting, style of architecture, style of 



draw, style of anything in which form or manner is conceived to be, in 



. <-r "light a degree, expressive of taste or sentiment if even this 



much of distinction still remains between what is called style and 



n.'-rc manner in the widest or loosest sense. 



Style, in writing or speaking, may of course mean a bad style as well 

 as a good style. Yet when the word stands alone, we always under- 

 it in the latter sense just as when we speak of expression in 

 painting or in nnwii 1 we mean just or forcible expression. Thus, Swift 

 has said, " I'ropt-r words in proper places make the true definition of a 

 This, however, is merely to tell us, what is sufficiently obvious, 

 that the art of expressing thought by language consists in two things : 

 first, the selection of words ; second, their collocation or arrangement. 

 That to constitute a good style, both this selection and this collocation 

 . there can be no doubt ; the only question is, what 

 "it. -i propriety as to such matters. Style has been sometimes 

 > red as nothing more than the image or outward expression of 



thought, as its produce or creation in the same sense in which it may 

 be said that the impression upon the wax is the creation of the seal ; 

 and it has hence been assumed that all that is necessary for the 

 ,ngofastyle of any degree of excellence is the possession of a 

 ii'iidiiig |>WIT i.f thought. But a little reflection will satisfy us 

 that thin is an insufficient explanation. Of two men equal in powers 

 of mind, and equally in possession of a subject, nothing is more 

 common than that the one should be able to expound it much more 

 clearly and effectively than the other. Language is an instrument the 

 use of which uiut be learned like that of any other instrument. Style 

 in rather the vehicle than the mere expression of thought ; and the 

 thought may be present where the vehicle in wanting. To some 

 extent, also, it may be laid to be the dress of thought, or that which 

 ornament* and net* off thought, not only by. the added charms of 

 l>ut by other powers which are inherent in words, and of which 

 unexprvMUMl thought knows nothing. As there are " thoughts that 

 breathe," o there are " words that burn " that by their associations 



:cite impressions of the grand, the pathetic, or the humorous, whether 

 they are addressed to the ear or merely to the eye. And great effects 

 are also to be achieved by the arrangement of words, not only in the 

 production of melody and cadence, but in a higher kind of gratification 

 or excitement as by the luminous disposition of all the parts of the 

 sentence, by the presentment of every term at the place best fitted to 

 iring out its whole import, by all the resources of what the gramma- 

 rians call inversion, ellipsis, and other figures of speech ; which, indeed, 

 wherever they are properly used, are no deviations from natural syntax at 

 all, but, on the contrary, the most natural forma that can be employed. 

 For, while writing is an art, it is nevertheless most true that, like all 

 the other arts the piirpose of which is to give expression to mind, the 

 guiding and controlling principle of its exercise, its life and being, as 

 we may say, must ever be as exact and sympathetic a conformity as 

 possible to the thoughts or emotions of the writer. Whatever more 

 style is than the mere expression of thought, that much it must be at 

 the least. A powerful thinker may not always be a powerful writer, 

 but no man can be a powerful writer who is not a powerful thinker. 

 Even the humblest quality of style, mere perspicuity, cannot be 

 attained without a corresponding degree of clearness of thought. We 

 sometimes meet with a perspicuity which is little more than gram- 

 matical, and hardly belongs to style at all ; but even that implies 

 distinct conceptions so far as they go a limpid stream of thought, 

 however little depth or spaciousness of intellect. And as for all higher 

 attributes, it is manifest that they cannot be found in the style, if they 

 do not exist in the mind of the writer. The only fountains from which 

 a man's words can derive the animation of true passion, or poetry, or 

 wit, must be his own head and heart. 



The lowest kind of writing that deserves the name of a style at all 

 (unless it is to be called a bad style) ought, as we have observed, to be 

 perfectly perspicuous that is to say, readily and completely intelli- 

 gible in so far as the understanding of it depends merely upon a 

 knowledge of the language. The subject may be a difficult one ; but 

 that is only a reason for more pains being bestowed to make the style 

 clear and easy, by a lucid arrangement and the avoidance of all 

 ambiguities of expression. But although this rule may be justly 

 insisted upon where nothing beyond such perspicuity is desirable, it 

 will not bear to be so rigidly enforced in regard to the higher kinds of 

 style. Here some sacrifice even of perspicuity is at times to be sub- 

 mitted to, for the sake of appropriate effects which could not be 

 otherwise attained. J&schylus, no doubt, might have made his cho- 

 russes, Pindar his odes, Tacitus his historic pictures, more easily 

 comprehensible, better fitted for the use of such readers as would 

 always run while they read, by greater diffuseness and dilution of 

 style ; but much more, certainly, would have been lost than gained by 

 the attempt. What is to be desired in the highest kinds of writing, as 

 in the highest creations of all the fine arts, is not perfect compre- 

 liensibility at a glance, but rather that fulness and profundity of 

 meaning which can never be wholly comprehended, but supplies 

 inexhaustibly something new to be seen and felt every time we return 

 to the work. 



In every cultivated language, however, the progress of style is 

 duuidedly towards more and more of first-sight intelligibility, in so far 

 as that depends upon precision of phrase, and the use of words in 

 certain limited meanings. This has been remarkably the history of 

 the English language, at least for the last two hundred and fifty years, 

 during which we have been fixing both our grammatical forms and our 

 rules of syntax to an extent that would surprise most persons if the 

 evidences of it were stated in detail. Whether all that has been done 

 in thin way has really improved the language, whether it has been 

 thereby rendered more expressive, more flexible, more fitted for the 

 variola ends which a language ought to subserve, may perhaps be 

 questioned. The gain in point of precision may possibly be more than 

 balanced by the loss both in ease and in variety of style. 



In another respect, however, English prose eloquence has undergone 

 a change of character in an opposite direction, by the greater infusion 

 which it has received of a colloquial tone and phraseology within the 

 last century and a half. Till towards the close of the 17th century, 

 the language of books, except in the comic drama and other light com- 

 positions of a kindred character, generally preserved a formality of gait 

 and manner which distinguished it nearly as much from living con- 



versation as the critics have held that the language of verse should be 

 distinguished from that of prose. Among the most eminent of the 

 writers who first broke through this species of restraint were Cowley, 

 in his Essays; Uryden, in his prefaces and other prose discourses; 

 .Sir William Temple; and the third Earl of Shaftesbury. The example 

 set by them was followed by Swift, Addixon, Steele, and their associates 

 and imitators, till, in the earlier part of the last century, the colloquial 

 ease and liveliness, which had thus become fashionable, threatened to 

 degenerate into a slovenliness, or shambling fluency, alike without either 

 elegance or precision. It must be admitted, that of all the writers of 

 the second quarter of the 18th century, Lord Bolingbroke, whatever 

 opinion may be entertained of his depth of thought or weight of 

 matter, wrote the best style, at once the most flexible and idiomatic, 

 and the purest, most refined, and most musical. But probably the 

 writer who on the whole did most to restore measure and emphasis to 

 our prose style was Johnson : his manner has not been much copied in 

 all its peculiarities or in its entire character, but yet more or less of its 



