28 
MALLERY. 
It is not so easy to be clear, and Sheridan’s phrase “ Easy 
writing’s curs’d hard reading ” is enforced by the confession 
of so great a thinker and writer as Charles Darwin. “ I shall 
always feel respect,” says he, “ for any one who has written 
a book, be it what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble 
which trying to write common English would cost one.” 
Again: “Writing plain English grows with me more and 
more difficult and never attainable.” “ No nigger with lash 
over him could have worked harder at clearness than I have 
done.” 
Style is not confined to vocabulary or ornamentation. “ Le 
style c’est l’homme,” Renan pronounces with the world’s as¬ 
sent. Style, besides being the man, is also his treatment— 
that is, the spirit and method of presentation, by which 
the author, putting himself in rapport with the reader, enters 
into the substance of the thought and translates it from his 
own mind to many minds. The facts must be distilled be¬ 
fore they can become spirited and effective. Style acts not 
merely to state facts, but to transport the author’s full sense 
of the facts, expressed with method and symmetry—that is, 
with the intelligence that can be conveyed and the beauty 
which enravishes to eager acceptance. It is therefore, apart 
from its matter, the structural work of an architect. Ben 
Jonson gives another admirable expression in point: “The 
congruent and harmonious fitting of parts in a sentence hath 
almost the fastening and force of knitting and connection as 
in stones well squared, which will rise strong a great way 
without mortar.” 
Composition means far more than merely writing out 
ideas, and unless the ideas are properly composited so as to 
be understood by other minds it is doubtful if they are clear to 
the writer. So the effort is as beneficial to the author as to 
the public. When Bohme was on his death-bed a delega¬ 
tion of his pupils came to him begging to have an obscure 
passage in his writings explained before it was too late. 
“ My dear children,” said the mystic, “ when I wrote this I 
understood its meaning and no doubt the omniscient God 
