94 STYLE AND THE MAN 



his thoughts are word-begotten and are often as un- 

 substantial as spectres and shadows. 



The stylist cultivates words as the florist culti- 

 vates flowers, and a new adjective or a new colloca- 

 tion of terms is to him what a new chrysanthemum 

 or a new pansy is to his brother of the forcing house. 

 He is more an European product than an American. 

 London and Paris abound in men who cultivate the 

 art of expression for its own sake, who study how to 

 combine words so as to tickle the verbal sense with- 

 out much reference to the value of the idea expressed. 

 Club and university life, excessive library culture 

 a sort of indoor or hothouse literary atmosphere 

 foster this sort of thing. 



French literature can probably show more stylists 

 than English, but the later school of British writers 

 is not far behind in the matter of studied expression. 

 Professor Raleigh, from whose work on style I 

 quoted above, often writes forcibly and suggestively; 

 but one cannot help but feel, on finishing his little 

 volume, that it is more the work of a stylist than of a 

 thinker. This is the opening sentence: "Style, the 

 Latin name for an iron pen, has come to designate 

 the art that handles, with ever fresh vitality and 

 wary alacrity, the fluid elements of speech." Does 

 not one faintly scent the stylist at the start ? Later 

 on he says : " In proportion as a phrase is memor- 

 able, the words that compose it become mutually 

 adhesive, losing for a time something of their in- 



