THE AET OF STYLE 227 



presentation of scenes and pictures by successions of con- 

 tributory images these operations of the literary craftsman 

 demand close attention to what is called transition. Style, it 

 has been said, consists in the art of transition : that is, the art 

 of moving easily and convincingly from point to point, 

 supplying the needful ' connective tissue ' of language without 

 clumsiness and without the obtrusive pedantry of scholastic 

 distinctions. Nor let it be imagined that this is a mere 

 matter of stylistic grace. The art of transition and connection 

 has quite as much to do with veracity of thought as with 

 elegance of expression. It was upon this art, as the one thing 

 needful to sound rhetoric, that Socrates discoursed in his 

 golden way to Phaedrus on the banks of the Ilissus. This is 

 what Buffon meant by the words which so impressed Gustave 

 Flaubert : ' Toutes les beautes intellectuelles qui se trouvent 

 dans un beau style, tous les rapports dont il est compost, sont 

 autant de verites aussi utiles, et peut-etre plus precieuses pour 

 1'esprit public, que celles qui peuvent faire le fond du sujet.' 



II 



While bestowing minute attention on the niceties of lan- 

 guage, young writers should bear in mind that no rules of 

 composition, no rhetoric which professes to teach the art of 

 treating subjects appropriately, can supply the two requisites 

 of a good style vigorous and well-digested thought, which 

 constitutes its matter; and pure idiomatic diction, which 

 constitutes its crowning grace of form. 



' Authors,' said De Quincey, in his unfinished essay on 

 Style, ' have always been a dangerous class for any language.' 

 They have been dangerous because they are liable to sub- 

 stitute sophistry and declamation for solid thinking, and 

 because the habit of writing books alienates their language from 

 the vivacity of the vernacular and the raciness of spoken idiom. 



Few men of letters nowadays would dare to follow Swift 

 and Sterne, those classics of our prose, in their bold use of 

 colloquialisms. Goethe prided himself on * having never 

 thought much about thinking/ We might argue in favour 



