STYLE AND THE MAN 59 



delightfully garrulous man in literature. "These 

 are fancies of my own," he says, " by which I do 

 not pretend to discover things, but to lay open my- 

 self." " Cut these sentences," says Emerson, " and 

 they bleed." Matthew Arnold denied that Emer- 

 son was a great writer ; but we cannot account for 

 the charm and influence of his works, it seems to 

 me, on any other theory than that he has at least this 

 mark of the great writer : he gives his reader of his 

 own substance, he saturates his page with the high and 

 rare quality of his own spirit. Everything he pub- 

 lished has a distinct literary value, as distinguished 

 from its moral or religious value. The same may be 

 said of Arnold himself : else we should not care much 

 for him. It is a particular and interesting type of 

 man that speaks and breathes in every sentence ; 

 his style is vital in his matter, and is no more sepa- 

 rable from it than the style of silver or of gold is 

 separable from those metals. 



In such a writer as Lecky on the other hand, or 

 as Mill or Spencer, one does not get this same sub- 

 tle individual flavor; the work is more external, 

 more the product of certain special faculties, as the 

 reason, the memory, the understanding ; and the per- 

 sonality of the author is not so intimately involved. 

 But in the writer with the creative touch, whether 

 he be poet, novelist, historian, critic, essayist, the 

 chief factor in the product is always his own person- 

 ality. 



Style, then, in the sense in which I am here us- 

 ing the term, implies that vital, intimate, personal 



