'218 NOTES ON STYLE 



is, the more strongly he is differentiated from the average of 

 human beings, the more salient will be the characteristic notes 

 of his expression. But even the commonest people have, each 

 of them, a specific style. The marks of difference become 

 microscopical as we descend from Dante or Shakespeare to 

 the drudges of the clerk's desk in one of our great cities. Yet 

 these marks exist, and are no less significant of individuality 

 than the variations between leaf and leaf upon the lime trees 

 of an avenue. 



It may be asked whether the manner of expression peculiar 

 to any person is a complete index to his character whether, 

 in other words, there is * an art to find the mind's construc- 

 tion' in the style. Not altogether and exhaustively. Not 

 all the actions and the utterances of an individual betray the 

 secret of his personality. You may live with men and women 

 through years, by day, by night, yet you will never know the 

 whole about them. No human being knows the whole about 

 himself. 



The deliberate attitude adopted by a literary writer implies 

 circumspection ; invites suppression, reservation, selection ; 

 is compatible with affectation, dissimulation, hypocrisy. So 

 much cannot be claimed for critical analysis as that we should 

 pretend to reproduce a man's soul after close examination of 

 his work. What we may assert with confidence is that the 

 qualities of style are intimately connected with the qualities 

 and limitations of the writer, and teach us much about him. 

 He wrote thus and thus, because he was this or this. In the 

 exercise of style it is impossible for any one to transcend his 

 inborn and acquired faculties of ideation, imagination, sense- 

 perception, verbal expression just as it is impossible in the 

 exercise of strength for an athlete to transcend the limits of 

 his physical structure, powers of innervation, dexterity, and 

 courage. 1 The work of art produced by a writer is therefore, 

 of necessity, complexioned and determined by the inborn and 

 acquired faculties of the individual. This is what we mean 

 by the hackneyed epigram : ' Le style c'est 1'homme.' 



See Emile Hennequin, La Critique Scientifique, pp. 64-67, for 

 a full and luminous exposition of these points. 



