64 LITEEAET VALUES 



to designate the art that handles, with ever fresh 

 vitality and wary alacrity, the fluid elements of 

 speech." Does not one faintly scent the stylist at 

 the start ? Later on he says : " In proportion as a 

 phrase is memorahle, the words that compose it be- 

 come mutually adhesive, losing for a time something 

 of their individual scope, — bringing with them, if 

 they be torn away too quickly, some cumbrous frag- 

 ments of their recent association." Does not the 

 stylist stand fully confessed here ? That he may 

 avoid these " cumbrous fragments " that will stick 

 to words when you suddenly pull them up by the 

 roots, " a sensitive writer is often put to his shifts, 

 and extorts, if he be fortunate, a triumph from the 

 accident of his encumbrance." The lust of expres- 

 sion, the conjuring with mere words, is evident. 

 " He is a poor stylist," says our professor, " who can- 

 not beg half a dozen questions in a single epithet, 

 or state the conclusion he would fain avoid in terms 

 that startle the senses into clamorous revolt." 



What it is in one that starts into " clamorous re- 

 volt" at such verbal gymnastics as are shown in 

 the following sentences I shall not try to define, but 

 it seems to me it is something real and legitimate. 

 " A slight technical implication, a faint tinge of 

 archaism in the common turn of speech that you em- 

 ploy, and in a moment you have shaken off the mob 

 that scours the rutted highway, and are addressing a 

 select audience of ticket holders with closed doors. 

 A single natural phrase of peasant speech, a direct 

 physical sense given to a word that genteel parlance 



