88 STYLE AND THE MAN 



English literature is full of imitations of the Greek 

 poets, but that which the Greek poets did not and 

 could not borrow they cannot lend; their quality 

 stays with them. The charm of spoken discourse 

 is largely in the personal quality of the speaker — 

 something intangible to print. When we see the 

 thing in print, we wonder how it could so have 

 charmed or moved us. To convey this charm, this 

 aroma of the man, to the written discourse is the 

 triumph of style. A recent French critic says of 

 Madame de Stael that she had no style; she wrote 

 just as she thought, but without being able to impart 

 to her writing the living quality of her speech. It 

 is not importance of subject-matter that makes a 

 work great, but importance of the subjectivity of 

 the w r riter, — a great mind, a great soul, a great per- 

 sonality. A work that bears the imprint of these, 

 that is charged with the life and power of these, 

 which it gives forth again under pressure, is alone 

 entitled to high rank. 



All pure literature is the revelation of a man. In 

 a work of true literary art the subject-matter has 

 been so interpenetrated and vitalized by the spirit 

 or personality of the writer, has become so thor- 

 oughly identified with it, that the two are one and 

 inseparable, and the style is the man. Works in 

 which this blending and identification, through emo- 

 tion or imagination, of the author with his subject 

 has not taken place, or has taken place imperfectly, 



