220 NOTES ON STYLE 



One is diffuse, and gets his thought out by reiterated state- 

 ment. Another makes epigrams, and finds some difficulty in 

 expanding their sense or throwing light upon them by illus- 

 trations. One arrives at conclusions by the way of argument. 

 Another clothes assertion with the tropes and metaphors of 

 rhetoric. 



The same is true of physical and aesthetical qualities. They 

 are felt inevitable in style. The sedentary student does not 

 use the same figures of speech as come naturally to the 

 muscular and active lover of field sports. According as the 

 sense for colour, or for sound, or for light, or for form shall 

 preponderate in a writer's constitutions, his language will 

 abound in references to the world, viewed under conditions of 

 colour, sound, light, or form. He will insensibly dwell upon 

 those aspects of things which stimulate his sensibility and 

 haunt his memory. Thus, too, predilections for sea or moun- 

 tains, for city-life or rural occupations, for flowers, precious 

 stones, scents, birds, animals, insects, different kinds of food, 

 torrid or temperate climates, leave their mark on literary 

 style. 



Acquired faculties and habits find their expression in style 

 no less than inborn qualities. Education, based upon 

 humanism or scientific studies ; contact with powerful per- 

 sonalities at an impressible period of youth; enthusiasm 

 aroused for this or that great masterpiece of literature ; social 

 environment ; high or low birth ; professional training for the 

 bar, the church, medicine, or commerce ; life in the army, at 

 sea, upon a farm, and so forth, tinge the mind and give a 

 more or less perceptible colour to language. 



The use of words itself yields, upon analysis, valuable 

 results illustrative of the various temperaments of authors. 

 A man's vocabulary marks him out as of this sort or that 

 sort his preference for certain syntactical forms, for short 

 sentences or for periods, for direct or inverted propositions, 

 for plain or figurative statement, for brief or amplified illus- 

 trations. Some compose sentences, but do not build para- 

 graphs like Emerson ; some write chapters, but cannot 

 construct a book. Nor is punctuation to be disregarded, 



