62 LITEEAEY VALUES 



responsive to life and nature about him ; let him try- 

 to see more clearly and feel more keenly, and con- 

 nect his vocabulary with his most radical and spon- 

 taneous self. Style can never come from the outside, 

 — from consciously seeking it by imitating the man- 

 ner of favorite authors. It comes, if at all, like the 

 bloom upon fruit, or the glow of health upon the 

 cheek, from an inner essential harmony and felicity. 



In a well known passage Macaulay tells what 

 happened to Miss Burney when she began to think 

 about her style, and fell to imitating Dr. Johnson ; 

 how she lost the " charming vivacity " and " per- 

 fectly natural unconsciousness of manner " of her 

 youthful writings, and became modish and affected. 

 She threw away her own style, which was a " toler- 

 ably good one," and which might " have been im- 

 proved into a very good one," and adopted " a style 

 in which she could attain excellence only by achiev- 

 ing an almost miraculous victory over nature and 

 over habit. She could cease to be Fanny Burney ; 

 it was not so easy to become Samuel Johnson." 



It is giving too much thought to style in the more 

 external and verbal aspects of it, which I am here 

 considering, that leads to the confounding of style 

 with diction, and that gives rise to the " stylist." 

 The stylist shows you what can be done with mere 

 words. He is the foliage plant of the literary flower 

 garden. An English college professor has recently 

 exploited him in a highly wrought essay on Style. 

 Says our professor, " The business of letters is two- 

 fold, to find words for meaning and to find meaning 



