176 NOTES ON STYLE 



by its encouragement of tendencies inherent in the language 

 and its dismissal of inconvenient factors, by its adoption of 

 foreign phrases useful to some special purpose or of meta- 

 phors and slang which suit new niceties of meaning, by the 

 awkward adaptation of alien and inharmonious terms neces- 

 sitated in the traffic of daily life, and finally by the exact and 

 beautiful unfolding of those qualities in which its own strength 

 lies. That language ultimately exhibits the highest capacity 

 for style which combines conservative respect for its native 

 genius with plasticity, becoming by each phase of growth a 

 more perfect instrument of unimpeded utterance, more recep- 

 tive of ideas, and more assimilative without loss of character. 

 Thus the intellectual and emotional qualities of nations 

 determine their style ; and their history (contact with other 

 races, submission to altered conditions of society, changes 

 in religion, epochs of culture) is written in their literature. 

 When the nation is a complicated hybrid, as is the case with 

 us English folk, its style presents a complex problem not only 

 to the philologer and etymologist, but also to the student 

 of psychology. A chapter from ' Modern Painters ' would 

 furnish the analyst with ample material for a lecture on 

 comparative ethnology and the historical evolution of the 

 English people. 



II 



Of all languages Greek has the widest range and compass 

 as an organ of expression. Not weight and gravity, but 

 lightness, elasticity, volubility, are its leading characteristics. 

 Strength is so clothed with radiance and beauty (as in the 

 godhood of the Delphian Apollo) that we think less of the 

 power than of the grace of this divine tongue. Homer's 

 phrase for human speech, ra Trrcpoevra, 'winged words,' is 

 peculiarly true of Greek, with its variety of liquids, vowels, 

 diphthongs, its gliding flow and twitter as of swallows on 

 their flight, its garrulous profusion of reiterated particles. 

 The blending of long and sonorous, yet never heavy, words 

 with short and lightly feathered monosyllables the perfect 

 balance and even distribution of consonants and vowels the 



