THE ART OF STYLE 225 



have to be regarded as simple propositions, no less simple 

 than these which follow : 



So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the 

 British Isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. The garrison had 

 been reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three 

 thousand. 



All these propositions are right, are veracious, are good in 

 style, in so far as they are adequate to the speaker's thought 

 and perception of fact in the first two cases to the highly 

 charged and complex matter which Wordsworth and Shelley 

 sought to deliver, in the third to the definite issue which 

 Macaulay had to report. Criticism might question whether 

 the siege of Londonderry was really ' the most memorable 

 in the annals of the British Isles.' But criticism, knowing 

 Macaulay's view of English history, would have no right to 

 challenge his statement on the ground of style. Criticism 

 might object to Wordsworth's identification of Duty with 

 Cosmic Law, and to Shelley's pathetic sympathy with autumn 

 woodlands. But criticism, having seized each poet's point of 

 view, would have no right to challenge his statement on 

 the ground of style. In each case the verbal expression is 

 correspondent to the thing presented. 



Precision being the main purpose of a writer, he will pay 

 minute attention to the grammar and logic of language, so 

 that there may be no obscurity, or incoherence in his method 

 of expression. With the same object he will study the 

 qualities of words, remembering that the right word used 

 in the right place constitutes the perfection of style. Words 

 will be weighed in their sonority, their colour-value, their 

 suggestiveness, their derivation and metaphysical usage. He 

 will show his taste by the avoidance of foreign vocables, 

 neologisms, obsolete terms, unless the rhetoric of his subject- 

 matter renders such verb a insolentia helpful to the meaning. 

 To be meticulous (as Sir Thomas Browne would say), in the 

 adoption of new phrases or the resuscitation of old words 

 is hardly less reprehensible than to be reckless in the ill- 

 considered use of them. Justice of perception consists in 



Q 



