STYLE AND THE MAN 63 



for words." It strikes me tliat the last half of this 

 proposition is not true of the serious writer, of the 

 man who has something to say, but is true only of 

 what is called the stylist, the man who has been so 

 often described as one having nothing to say, which 

 he says extremely well. The stylist's main effort 

 is a verbal one, to find meaning for words ; he does 

 not wrestle with ideas, but with terms and phrases ; 

 his thoughts are word-begotten and are often as un- 

 substantial as spectres and shadows. 



The stylist cultivates words as the florist culti- 

 vates flowers, and a new adjective or a new colloca- 

 tion of terms is to him what a new chrysanthemum 

 or a new pansy is to his brother of the forcing 

 house. He is more an European product than an 

 American. London and Paris abound in men who 

 cultivate the art of expression for its own sake, who 

 study how to combine words so as to tickle the 

 verbal sense without much reference to the value of 

 the idea expressed. Club and university life, exces- 

 sive library culture — a sort of indoor or hothouse 

 literary atmosphere — foster this sort of thing. 



French literature can probably show more stylists 

 than English, but the later school of British writers 

 are not far behind in the matter of studied expres- 

 sion. Professor Kaleigh, from whose work on style 

 I quoted above, often writes forcibly and sugges- 

 tively ; but one cannot help but feel, on finishing his 

 little volume, that it is more the work of a stylist 

 than of a thinker. This is the opening sentence : 

 " Style, the Latin name for an iron pen, has come 



