PERSONAL STYLE 221 



inasmuch as stops enable us to measure a writer's sense of 

 time-values, and the importance he attaches to several degrees 

 of rest and pause. 



Ill 



It is impossible to do more than indicate some of the 

 leading points which illustrate the meaning of the saying that 

 style is the man ; anyone can test them and apply them for 

 himself. We not only feel that Walter Scott did not write 

 Tike Thackeray, but we a] so know that he could not write like 

 Thackeray, and vice versa. This impossibility of one man 

 producing work in exactly the same manner as another makes 

 all deliberate attempts at imitation assume the form of parody 

 or caricature. The sacrifice of individuality involved in 

 scrupulous addiction to one great master of Latin prose, 

 Cicero, condemned the best stylists of the Renaissance men 

 like Muretus to lifeless and eventually worthless production. 

 Meanwhile the exact psychology is wanting which would 

 render our intuitions regarding the indissoluble link between 

 style and personal character irrefutable. 1 



Literary style is more a matter of sentiment, emotion, 

 involuntary habits of feeling and observing, constitutional 

 sympathy with the world and men, tendencies of curiosity 

 and liking, than of the pure intellect. The style of scientific 

 works, affording little scope for the exercise of these psycho- 

 logical elements, throws less light upon their authors' tempera- 

 ment than does the style of poems, novels, essays, books of 

 travel, descriptive criticism. In the former case all that need 

 be aimed at is lucid exposition of fact and vigorous reasoning. 

 In the latter, the fact to be stated, the truth to be arrived at, 

 being of a more complex nature, involves a process akin to 

 that of the figurative arts. The stylist has here to produce 



While I was engaged in writing this essay, a young French author, 

 now, alas ! dead, sent me a book which may be considered as an 

 important contribution to the psychology of style. It is entitled, 

 La Critique Scientifique, par Ernile Hennequin. Paris: Perrin et 

 Cie., 1888. 



