STYLE AND THE MAN 67 



of many able minds are not. These men impart 

 something personal and distinctive to the language 

 they use. They make the words their own. The 

 literary quality is not something put on. It is not 

 of the hand, it is of the mind ; it is not of the mind, 

 but of the soul ; it is of whatever is most vital and 

 characteristic in the writer. It is confined to no 

 particular manner and to no particular matter. It 

 may be the gift of writers of widely different man- 

 ners — of Carlyle as well as of Arnold ; and in men 

 of similar manners, one may have it and the other 

 may not. It is as subtle as the tone of the voice 

 or the glance of the eye. Quality is the one thing 

 in life that cannot be analyzed, and it is the one 

 thing in art that cannot be imitated. A man's man- 

 ner may be copied, but his style, his charm, his real 

 value, can only be parodied. In the conscious or 

 unconscious imitations of the major poets by the 

 minor, we get only a suggestion of the manner of 

 the former ; their essential quality cannot be repro- 

 duced. 



English literature is full of imitations of the 

 Greek poets, but that which the Greek poets did not 

 and could not borrow they cannot lend ; their qual- 

 ity stays with them. The charm of spoken dis- 

 course is largely in the personal quality of the 

 speaker — something intangible to print. When 

 we see the thing in print, we wonder how it could 

 so have charmed or moved us. To convey this 

 charm, this aroma of the man, to the written dis- 

 course is the triumph of style. A recent French 



