90 STYLE AND THE MAN 



rable from it than the style of silver or of gold is 

 separable from those metals. 



In such a writer as Lecky on the other hand, or 

 as Mill or Spencer, one does not get this same subtle 

 individual flavor; the work is more external, more 

 the product of certain special faculties, as the rea 

 son, the memory, the understanding; and the per 

 sonality of the author is not so intimately involved. 

 But in the writer with the creative touch, whether 

 he be poet, novelist, historian, critic, essayist, the 

 chief factor in the product is always his own per 

 sonality. 



Style, then, in the sense in which I am here using 

 the term, implies that vital, intimate, personal rela 

 tion of the man to his language by which he makes 

 the words his own, fills them with his own quality, 

 and gives the reader that lively sense of being in 

 direct communication with a living, breathing, men 

 tal and spiritual force. The writer who appears to 

 wield his language as an instrument or a tool, some 

 thing exterior to himself, who makes you conscious 

 of his vocabulary, or whose words are the garments 

 and not the tissue of his thought, has not style in 

 this sense. "Style," says Schopenhauer, "is the 

 physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to char 

 acter than the face." This definition is as good as 

 any, and better than most, because it implies that 

 identification of words with thoughts, of the man 

 with his subject, which is the secret of a living style. 



