STYLE AND THE MAN 53 



the accidents of style. Indeed, perfect workman- 

 ship is one thing ; style, as the great writers have 

 it, is quite another. It may, and often does, go 

 with faulty workmanship. It is the use of words 

 in a fresh and vital way, so as to give us a vivid 

 sense of a new spiritual force and personality. In 

 the best work the style is found and hidden in the 

 matter. 



If a writer does not hring a new thought, he must 

 at least bring a new quality, — he must give a fresh, 

 new flavor to the old thoughts. Style or quality 

 will keep a man's work alive whose thought is es- 

 sentially commonplace, as is the case with Addison ; 

 and Arnold justly observes of the poet Gray that 

 his gift of style doubles his force and " raises him to 

 a rank beyond what his natural richness and power 

 seem to warrant." 



There is the correct, conventional, respectable and 

 scholarly use of language of the mass of writers, and 

 there is the fresh, stimulating, quickening use of 

 it of the man of genius. How apt and racy and 

 telling is often the language of unlettered persons ; 

 the horn writer carries this same gift into a higher 

 sphere. There is a passage in one of Emerson's 

 early letters, written when he was but twenty-four, 

 and given by Mr. Cabot in his Memoir, which shows 

 how clearly at that age Emerson discerned the secret 

 of good writing and good preaching. 



" I preach half of every Sunday. When I at- 

 tended church on the other half of a Sunday, and 

 the image in the pulpit was all of clay, and not of 



