fart 

 THE ART OF STYLE 



' THE choice and command of language,' said Gibbon, * is 

 the fruit of exercise.' Every writer has it in his power to 

 improve his faculty of expression, as every athlete can improve 

 his muscular development by practice. 



The final end of all style is precision, veracity of utterance, 

 truth to the thing to be presented. The thing itself will 

 differ in simplicity and complexity, in scientific aridity 

 and in emotional richness, in imaginative grandeur and in 

 passionate intensity. Style, regarded from the point of 

 view of art, adapts itself to these differences in the subject- 

 matter. Whether consciously or unconsciously, is not at 

 present the question. It suffices to say that style (if worthy 

 of the name) finds the pure phrase the fitting mode of 

 utterance. It rejects superfluities, admits ornament where 

 ornament is part and parcel of the thing to be presented, 

 seeks beauty in truth, selects, discards, mindful always that 

 there is one and only one absolutely right way of saying 

 anything. 



This is as true of poetry as of prose. Phrases like : 



Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 

 And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong : 



or like : 



Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is ; 

 What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 



