STYLE AND THE MAN 71 



running away in mere words. His heat is that of 

 fever ; his inspiration borders on delirium. 



We never tire of Addison, by reason of his style, 

 or of Swift or of Lamb or of our own Irving or 

 Hawthorne or Warner. It is probably as rare to find 

 a French writer whose style tires the reader as it is 

 to find a German whose style does not. As M. Bru- 

 netifere well says, French literature is a social litera- 

 ture, German is philosophic, and English individual- 

 istic. It is the business of the first to be agreeable, 

 of the second to be profound, of the third to be origi- 

 nal. Who does not tire of Strauss sooner than of 

 Eenan, of Macaulay sooner than of Sainte-Beuve ? 



A writer with a pronounced, individualistic style 

 — one full of mere mechanical difficulties, like 

 Browning's or Carlyle's — runs great risk of weary- 

 ing the reader and of being left behind. So far as 

 his style degenerates into mannerism, so far is he 

 handicapped in the race. Smoothness is not beauty, 

 neither is roughness power ; yet without a certain 

 harmony and continuity there is neither beauty 

 nor power. Herbert Spencer, in his essay on the 

 Philosophy of Style, would have a writer avoid this 

 danger of wearying his reader, by writing alter- 

 nately in different styles. " To have a specific style," 

 he says, " is to be poor in speech." " The perfect 

 writer will express himself as Junius, when in the 

 Junius frame of mind ; when he feels as Lamb felt, 

 will use a like familiar speech ; and will fall into 

 the ruggedness of Carlyle when in a Carlylean 

 mood." A man who should try to follow this 



