STYLE AND THE MAN 95 



dividual scope, bringing with them, if they be 

 torn away too quickly, some cumbrous fragments 

 of their recent association." Does not the stylist 

 stand fully confessed here? That he may avoid 

 these " cumbrous fragments " that will stick to words 

 when you suddenly pull them up by the roots, "a 

 sensitive writer is often put to his shifts, and extorts, 

 if he be fortunate, a triumph from the accident of 

 his encumbrance." The lust of expression, the con- 

 juring with mere words, is evident. " He is a poor 

 stylist," says our professor, " who cannot beg half a 

 dozen questions in a single epithet, or state the con- 

 clusion he would fain avoid in terms that startle the 

 senses into clamorous revolt." 



What it is in one that starts into "clamorous re- 

 volt" at such verbal gymnastics as are shown in 

 the following sentences I shall not try to define, but 

 it seems to me it is something real and legitimate. 

 "A slight technical implication, a faint tinge of 

 archaism in the common turn of speech that you em- 

 ploy, and in a moment you have shaken off the mob 

 that scours the rutted highway, and are addressing a 

 select audience of ticket holders with closed doors. 

 A single natural phrase of peasant speech, a direct 

 physical sense given to a word that genteel parlance 

 authorizes readily enough in its metaphorical sense, 

 and at a touch you have blown the roof off the draw- 

 ing-room of the villa and have set its obscure inhab* 

 itants wriggling in the unaccustomed sunshine." 



