STYLE AND THE MAN 89 



do not belong to pure literature. They may serve a 

 useful purpose; but all useful purposes, in the strict 

 sense, are foreign to those of art, which means for- 

 eign to the spirit that would live in the whole, that 

 would live in the years and not in the days, in time 

 and not in the hour. The true literary artist gives 

 you of the substance of his mind; not merely his 

 thought or his philosophy, but something more inti- 

 mate and personal than that. It is not a tangible 

 object passed from his hand to yours; it is much 

 more like a transfusion of blood from his veins to 

 yours. Montaigne gives us Montaigne, the most 

 delightfully garrulous man in literature. " These are 

 fancies of my own," he says, "by which I do not 

 pretend to discover things, but to lay open myself." 

 "Cut these sentences," says Emerson, "and they 

 bleed." Matthew Arnold denied that Emerson was 

 a great writer; but we cannot account for the charm 

 and influence of his works, it seems to me, on any 

 other theory than that he has at least this mark of 

 the great writer: he gives his reader of his own sub- 

 stance, he saturates his page with the high and rare 

 quality of his own spirit. Everything he published 

 has a distinct literary value, as distinguished from 

 its moral or religious value. The same may be said 

 of Arnold himself: else we should not care much 

 for him. It is a particular and interesting type of 

 man that speaks and breathes in every sentence; 

 his style is vital in his matter, and is no more sepa- 



