96 STYLE AND THE MAN 



Amiel says of Renan that science was his material 

 rather than his object; his object was style. Yet 

 Renan was not a stylist in the sense in which I am 

 using the word. His main effort was never a ver 

 bal one, never an effort to find meaning for words; 

 he was intent upon his subject; his style was vital 

 in his thought, and never took on airs on its own 

 account. You cannot in him separate the artist from 

 the thinker, nor give either the precedence. All 

 writers with whom literature is an art aim at style 

 in the sense that they aim to present their subject in 

 the most effective form, with clearness, freshness, 

 force. They become stylists when their thoughts 

 wait upon their words, or when their thoughts are 

 word-begotten. Such writers as Gibbon, De Quin- 

 cey, Macaulay, have studied and elaborate styles, 

 but in each the matter is paramount and the mind 

 finds something solid to rest upon. 



"The chief of the incommodities imposed upon 

 the writer," says Professor Raleigh, is "the neces 

 sity at all times and at all costs to mean something," 

 or to find meaning for words. This no doubt is a 

 hard task. The trouble begins when one has the 

 words first. To invoke ideas with words is a much 

 more difficult experience than the reverse process. 

 But probably all true writers have something to say 

 before they have the desire to say it, and in propor 

 tion as the thought is vital and real is its expression 

 easy. 



