THE ART OF STYLE 233 



casuistical subtlety, combined with imperfect powers of 

 criticism ; but these are variously, if slightly, modified 

 according to the matter and the mode of presentation. 



Within the stricter limits of writing the same rhetorical 

 principles hold good. If a man of science sits down to pen 

 a treatise which will be read by experts in the libraries, and 

 discussed in the learned societies of Europe, he confines 

 himself to exact statement and the lucid order of marshalled 

 arguments. If he desires to popularise the same ideas, he 

 abounds in illustrations and elucidations, introducing matter 

 which would have been irrelevant in the handling of his 

 theme for scientific students. 



History, fiction, biography, albeit they are three species of 

 prose narrative, demand different styles. It is indeed possible 

 to lend the glamour of romance to history, as Michelet did in 

 his ' Histoire de France,' or to treat it from the biographical 

 point of view, as Carlyle did his ' Frederick.' Yet history 

 cannot be mistaken for deliberate fiction or for pure biography. 

 Fiction, in like manner, may be composed upon the lines of 

 history or biography ; but in so far as it assumes the gravity 

 of the one or the veracity of the other, it fails to communicate 

 the impressions we expect from romance. This is proved 

 sufficiently by current language. We say that the sixth and 

 seventh books of Thucydides are as engrossing as any novel, 

 that the last three books of Herodotus have the movement of 

 a drama, that the incidents of Cellini's autobiography surpass 

 the boldest inventions of an imaginative writer. That means 

 that we look for certain qualities in fiction of which we are 

 now and then reminded in the lives of men or the episodes of 

 national story. Biography, again, can be written from the 

 point of view of fiction that was common enough in past 

 ages ; or from the point of view of history that is a favourite 

 practice nowadays. But whether we regard Plutarch's ' Lives ' 

 and Machiavelli's ' Castruccio Castracane,' which represent 

 the one method, or the many ' Lives and Times ' of eminent 

 persons which are fashionable at the present date, it is obvious 

 in each case that the writers were aiming at what should pass 

 for full-length portraits of individuals. Biography differs from 



