172 HISTORY AND USAGE OF THE WORD 



IV 



Hitherto we have been contemplating style subjectively, 

 from the inside. We have considered it as verbal expression, 

 indispensable to human beings in their utterance of thought 

 through language. But we must also approach the problem 

 objectively, from the outside. This we are enabled to do by 

 the admitted fact that style can be controlled, and language 

 artistically handled. ' The style of an author should be the 

 image of his mind,' said Gibbon. That is the subjective 

 aspect. * But,' he continues, * the choice and command 

 of language is the fruit of exercise.' That is the objective 

 aspect. 



It will be admitted that when we speak of style in 

 literature, we are often thinking of an art whereby men more 

 or less deliberately clothe their thought in language, and of an 

 art which can to some extent be acquired. Words, as I have 

 said above, are for the poet and prose-writer what lines and 

 colours are for the painter, or form and marble for the sculptor. 

 Thought is, however, so inextricably interwoven with language, 

 and words react so subtly upon mental operations, that 

 language cannot be regarded as a vehicle in the same way as 

 the marble of the sculptor, the pigments of the painter, are 

 plastic vehicles. It is possible, indeed, to treat language 

 aesthetically : that is to say, with special reference to its 

 sonorous, rhythmical, suggestive, and symbolical qualities. 

 Still the fact remains that thought demands language in the 

 simplest no less than in the subtlest modes of utterance, 

 whereby men may communicate with their neighbours ; and 

 so words come to the verbal artist surcharged with multi- 

 tudinous associations. Thought does not demand colour, 

 marble, tone in the ordinary intercourse of life. It uses these 

 things at its pleasure and caprice, not for its necessities. The 

 problem of style in literature is therefore ab initio different 

 from that of style in any of the other arts. The writer has to 

 obtain his effects by manipulating a material already pregnant 

 with intellectual and emotional meanings. Nowhere is the 

 connection between content and expression, mental subject- 



