STYLE AND THE MAN 91 



Hence the man who imitates another wears a mask, 

 as does the man who writes in a language to which 

 he was not born. 



It has been said that novel-writing is a much 

 finer art in our day than it was in the time of Scott, 

 or of Dickens and Thackeray, finer, I think, be- 

 cause it is in the hands of finer-strung, more dain- 

 tily equipped men; but would one dare to say it is 

 a greater art ? One may admit all that is charged 

 about Scott's want of style, his diffuseness and cum- 

 brousness, and his tedious descriptions, and still 

 justly claim for him the highest literary honors. He 

 was a great nature, as Goethe said, and we come into 

 vital contact with that great nature in his romances. 

 He was not deficient in the larger art that knows 

 how to make a bygone age live again to the imagina- 

 tion. He himself seems to have deprecated his " big 

 bow-wow" style in comparison with the exquisite 

 touches of Jane Austen. But no fineness of work- 

 manship, no deftness of handling, can make up for 

 the want of a large, rich, copious human endowment. 

 I think we need to remember this when we compare 

 unfavorably such men as Dickens and Thackeray 

 with the cleverer artists of our own day. Scott makes 

 up to us for his deficiencies in the matter of style 

 by the surpassing human interest of his characters 

 and incidents, their relations to the major currents 



