1868 STYLE 429 



This lecture " On a Piece of Chalk," together with 

 two others delivered this year, seem to me to mark 

 the maturing of his style into that mastery of clear 

 expression for which he deliberately laboured, the 

 saying exactly what he meant, neither too much nor 

 too little, without confusion and without obscurity. 

 Have something to say, and say it, was the Duke of 

 Wellington's theory of style; Huxley's was to say 

 that which has to be said in such language that you can 

 stand cross-examination on each word. Be clear, 

 though you may be convicted of error. If you are 

 clearly wrong, you will run up against a fact some 

 time and get set right. If you shuffle with your 

 subject, and study chiefly to use language which will 

 give a loophole of escape either way, there is no hope 

 for you. 



This was the secret of his lucidity. In no one 

 could Buffon's aphorism on style find a better illustra- 

 tion, Le style c'est Vhomme m$me. In him science and 

 literature, too often divorced, were closely united; 

 and literature owes him a debt for importing into it 

 so much of the highest scientific habit of mind ; for 

 showing that truthfulness need not be bald, and that 

 real power lies more in exact accuracy than in 

 luxuriance of diction. Years after, no less an 

 authority than Spedding, in a letter upon the 

 influence of Bacon on his own style in the matter of 

 exactitude, the pruning of fine epithets and sweeping 

 statements, the reduction of numberless superlatives 

 to positives, asserted that, if as a young man he had 



