72 LITEEART VALUES 



advice would be pretty sure to be Jack-of-all-styles 

 and master of none. What a piece of patchwork 

 his composition would be ! A " specific style " is 

 not to be avoided ; it is to be cultivated and prac- 

 ticed till every false note, every trace of crudeness 

 and insincerity, is purged out of it. 



The secret of good prose is a subtle quality or 

 flavor, hard to define, like that of a good apple or 

 a good melon, and it is as intimately bound up in 

 the very substance and texture in the one case as 

 in the other, and, we may add, is of as many varie- 

 ties. We are sure always to get good prose from Mr. 

 Howells and Colonel Higginson, but we are not 

 always so sure of getting it from certain of our 

 younger novelists. 



Here is a sample of bad prose from a popular 

 novel by a Southern writer : — 



" The whole woods emerged from the divine bath 

 of nature with the coolness, the freshness, the im- 

 mortal purity of Diana united to the roseate glow and 

 mortal tenderness of Venus, and haunted by two 

 spirits : the chaste, unfading youth of Endymion and 

 the dust-bom warmth and eagerness of Dionysus." 



Yet the man who could permit himself the use of 

 such inflated language as that, was capable of turn- 

 ing off such a passage as this : — 



" Some women, in marrying, demand all and give 

 all : with good men they are happy ; with base men 

 they are the broken-hearted. Some demand every- 

 thing and give little : with weak men they are ty- 

 rants ; with strong men they are the divorced. Some 



