STYLESINCF. all progress of mind consists for the mostpart in differentiation, in the resolution of anobscure and complex object into its componentaspects, it is surely the stupidest of losses to con-fuse things which right reason has put asunder,to lose the sense of achieved distinctions, thedistinction between poetry and prose, for 1Il-

stance, or, to speak more exactly, between thelaws and characteristic excellences of verse andprose composItIOn. On the other hand, thosewho have dwelt most emphatically on the dis-ti nction between prose and verse, prose andpoetry, may sometimes have been tempted tolimit the proper functions of prose too narrowly;and this again is at least false economy, as being.in effect, the renunciation of a certain means orfaculty, in a world where after all we must needsmake the most of things. Critical efforts tolimit art a priort~ by anticipations regarding thenatural incapacity of the material with whichthis or that artist works, as the sculptor withsol id form, or the prose-writer with the ordinary

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language of men, are always liable to be dis-credited by the facts of artistic production; andwhile prose is actually found to be a colouredthing with Bacon, picturesque with Livy andCarlyle, musical with Cicero and Newman,mystical and intimate with Plato and Micheletand Sir Thomas Browne, exalted or florid, it maybe, with Milton and Taylor, it will be useless toprotest that it can be nothing at all, except some-thing very tamely and narrowly confined tomainly practical ends-a kind of "good round-hand;" as useless as the protest that poetrymight not touch prosaic subjects as with Words-worth, or an abstruse matter as with Browning,or treat contemporary life nobly as with Tenny-son. In subordination to one essential beautyin all good literary style, in all literature as afine art, as there are many beauties of poetry sothe beauties of prose are many, and it is thebusiness of criticism to estimate them as such;as it is good in the criticism of verse to look forthose hard, logical, and quasi-prosaic excellenceswhich that too has, or needs. To find in thepoem, amid the flowers, the allusions, the mixedperspectives, of Lycidas for instance, the thought,the logical structure :-how wholesome! howdelightful I as to identify in prose what we cal1the poetry, the imaginative power, not treatingit as out of place and a kind of vagrant intruder,but by way of an estimate of its rights, that is,of its achieved powers, there.

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Dryden, with the characteristic instinct of hisage, loved to emphasise the distinction betweenpo~try a~d prose, the protest against their coo-ft.,s'~n. With each other, corning with somewhatdnnlf~lshed effect fro~n one w hose poetry was soprosaic. .In truth, his sense of prosaic excellenceaffected his v~rse .rather than his prose, which isnot o~Jr fervid, richly fi!?l1red, poetic, as we say,h~'t vl.waed, all. unconscIOusly, by many a scan-fling line. Settlllg up correctness, that humblemer.it of prose, as the central literary excellence,he IS really a less correct writer than he mayseem., still with an imperfect mastery of therelative pronoun. It might have been foreseenthat, in. the rotations of mind, the province ofpoetry In prose would find its asserror ; and, acentury after Dryden, amid very different intel-lectual needs, and with the need therefore ofgreat mO?ifications .in l~ter:lfy form, the range ofthe poenc force In literature was effectivelyenlarged by Wordsworth. The true distinctionbetween prose and poetry he regarded as thealmost technical or accidental one of the absenceor pr~sence of metric.al beauty, or, say I metricalrestr:unt; and for him the opposition carne tohe between verse and prose of course : but asthe essential dichotomy in this matter' betw'een. . . ,Imaglllatl~e all~ ll.ni~a~inaljve writing, parallelto De QUlIlcey s distinction between" the litera-~ure of power and th~ literature of knowledge,"III the former of which the composer gives us

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not fact, but his peculiar sense of fact, whetherpast or present.

Dismissing then, under sanction of Words-worth, that harsher opposition of poetry to prose,as savouring in fact of the arbitrary psychologyof the last century, and with it the prejudice thatthere can be but one only beauty of prose style,I propose here to point out certain qualities ofall literature as a fine art, which, if they applyto the literature of fact, apply still more to theliterature of the imaginative sense of fact, whilethey apply indifferently to verse ami prose, so faras either is real1y imaginative-certain conditionsof true art in both alike, which conditions mayalso contain in them the secret of the proper dis-crimination and guardianship of the peculiarexcellences of either.

The line between fact and something quitedifferent from external fact is, indeed, hard todraw. In Pascal, for instance, in the persuasivewriters generally, how difficult to define thepoint where, from time to time, argument which,if it is. to he worth anything at all, must consistof facts or groups of facts, becomes a pleading-a theorem no longer, but essentially an appeal tothe reader to catch the writer's spirit, to thinkwith him, if one can or will-an expression nolonger of fact but of his sense of it, his peculiarintuition of a world, prospective, or discernedbelow the faulty conditions of the present, ineither case changed somewhat from the actual

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world. In science, on the other hand, in historyso far as it conforms to scientific rule, we have aliterary domain where the imagination may bethought to be always an intruder. And as, inall science, the functions of literature reducethemselves eventually to the transcribing of fact,so all the excellences of literary form in regardto science are reducible to various kinds of. pains-taking; this good quality heing involved in a1l" skilled work" whatever, in the drafting of anact of parliament, as in sewing. Yet here again,t he ~riter's sense of fact, in. history especially,and III a11 those complex suhJects which do butlie on the borders of science, will still take theplace of fact, in various degrees. Your historian. - ,for instance, with absolutely truthful intention,amid the multitude of facts presented to himmust needs select, and in selecting assert some-thing of his own humour, something that comesnot of the world without but of a vision within.So Gibbon moulds his unwieldy material to apreconceived view. Livy, Tacitus, Michelet,moving full of poignant sensibility amid therecords of the past, each, after his own sense,modifies-who can tell where and to what. degree ?-and becomes something else than a~ranscriber; each, as he thus modifies, passingInto the domain of art proper. For just in pro-porti(;n as the writer's aim, consciously or un-consciously, comes to he the transcrihing, notof the world. not of mere fact, but of his sense

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of it he becomes an artist, his work fine art;and ~()od art (as I hope lI1til~late1y to show) inproportion to the truth of his preselltmen~ ofthat sense; as in those humbler or plainerfunctions of literature also, truth-truth to barefact, therc-> is the essence of such artistic qualityas they may have. Truth! there can be nomerit, no craft at all, without that. And further,all beauty is in the long run only.fineness of truth,.or what we call expression, the finer accommo-dation of speech to that vision within.

-The transcript of his sense of fact ratherthan the fact, as being preferable, pleasanter,more beautiful to the writer himself. In litera-ture, as in every other product of human. skill, inthe moulding of a bell or a platter for Instance,wherever this sense asserts itself, wherever theproducer so modifies his work as, over.and ab?veits primary use or inte~tion, to m~kc It pleasing(to himself, of course, In the first JIlst~nce) there," fine" as opposed to merely serviceable ~rt,exists. Literary art, that is, like a~l art whichis in any way imitative or reproductive of fac~-form 'or colour or incident--is the representationof su~h fact as 'connected with soul, of a specificpersonality, in its preferences, its volition andpower. . .' ..

Such is the matter of imagmauve or artisncliterature-this transcript, not of mere fact, butof fact in its infinite variety, as modified byhuman preference in all its infinitely varied

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STYLEforms. It will be good· literary art not becauseit is brilliant or sober, or rich, or impulsive, orsevere, but just in proportion as its representationof that sense, that soul-fact, is true, verse beingonly one department of such literature, andirnag inative prose, it may he thought, heing thespecial art of the modern world. That imagin-ative prose should be the special and opportuneart of the modern world results from two im-portant facts about the latter: first, the chaoticvariety and complexity of its interests, makingthe intellectual issue, the reaJly master currentsof the present time incalculahle-a condition ofmind little susceptible of the restraint proper toverse form, so that the most characteristic verseof the nineteenth century has been lawless verse;and secondly, an all - pervading naturalism, acuriosity about everything whatever as it reallyis, involving a certain humility of attitude,cognate to what must, after all, be the lessambitious form of literature. And prose thusasserting itself as the special and privilegedartistic faculty of the present day, will be, how-ever critics may try to narrow its scope, as variedin its excellence as humanity itself reflecting onthe facts of its latest experience-an instrumentof many stops, meditative, observant, descriptive,eloquent, analytic, plaintive, fervid. Its beautieswill he not exclllsively cc pedestrian": it willexert, in due measure, all the varied charms ofpoetry, down to the rhythm which, as in Cicero,

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or M ichelct, or Newman, at their best, gives itsmusical value to every syllable.1

The literary art ist is of necessi ty a scholar,and ill what he proposes to do will have inmind, first of al1, the scholar and the scholarlyconscience-s-tbe male conscience in this matter,as we must think it, under a system of educationwhich still to so large an extent limits realscholarship to men. In his self-criticism, hesupposes always that sort of reader who will go(full of eyes) warily, considerately, though with-out consideration for him, over the gronnd whichthe female conscience traverses so lightly, soamiably. For the material in which he worksis no more a creation of his own than thesculptor's marble. Product of a myriad variousminds and contending tongues, compact ofobscure and minute association, a language hasits own abundant and often recondite laws, in thehabitual and summary recognition of whichscholarship consists. A writer, full of a matterhe is before all things anxious to express, maythink. of those laws, the limitations of vocabulary,structure, and the like, as a restriction, but if a

1 Mr. Saintsbury, in his /lpuimt1lJ If E1Iglilh Prllt,fr,'" Mal,rJI. M,uaa/"J, has succeeded in tracing, through successive EnglishprOle-writers, the tradition of that severer beauty in them, of whichthis admirable schelar of our Irt erature is known to be a love".E"glilh Prete, fro", !lfa1lJ'fJill, to 1'1'iJdur"-,, more recently" chosenand edited" hy • YOllnger scholar, Mr. Arthur Galton. of NewCollege, Oxford, ~ lover of our literature at once enthusiastic anddiscreet, aims at a more various illustration of the eloquent powenof English prose, and i. a delightful companion.

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re~l artist. ~ill find in them an opportunity,I!IS Pll~ctal\ot~S oil.servance of the proprieties ofhis medium will diffuse through all he writes agen~ra] air ?f sensib ili tv, of relined IIsage. Ex-C(lISfOfles d:blfre nafurtl'-·the exclusions, or rejec-trons, which nature dem:lnds-we know howlarge .:l part ~hcse play, according to Hacon, inthe science ot nature. III a somewhat changedsense, we might say t hat the art of t he scholarj~ summed up in the observance of those rejec.t rons demanded by the nature of his mediumthe material he must use. Alive to the value ofan atmosphere in which every term finds itsutmost degree of expression, and with all thejealousy of a lover of words, he will resist aconstant tendency on the I.lart of the majority ofthose who use them to eflnce the distinctions oflanguage, the facility of writers often reinforcingi,ll this respe~t t~e work of the vulg:lf. He willfeel the obligation not of the laws ollly, hut ofthose affiniti?s, avoidances, those mere prefer-ence~, .of his ~anguage, which through theaSSOclatl~ns of literary history have become apart of Its nature, prescrihing the rejection ofmany a ne~logy, .many a license, many a gipsyphrase .whlch ~Ight present itself as actuallyexpressive. His appeal, again, is to the scholar,who has great experience in literature, and will~how n.o favour t(~ sh~rt - CI~ ts, or hackneyedil'lustration, or an a/lcctatlOI1 of learning designedfor the unlearned. Bence a contention, a sense

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of self-restraint and renunciation, having for thesusceptible reader the effect of a challenge forminute consideration; the attention of the writer,in every minutest detail, being a pledge that itis worth the reader's while to be attentive too,that the writer is dealing scrupulously with hisinstrument, and therefore, indirectly, with thereader himself also, that he has the science ofthe instrument he plays on, perhaps, after all,with a freedom which in such case will be thefreedom of a master.

For meanwhile, braced only by those restraints,he is really vindicating his liberty in the makingof a vocabulary, an entire system of composition,for himself, his own true manner; and when wespeak of the manner of a true master we meanwhat is essential in his art. Pedantry beingonly the scholarship of Ie cuistre (we have noEnglish equivalent) he is no pedant, and doesbut show his intelligence of the rules of languagein his freedoms with it, addition or expansion,which like the spontaneities of manner in a well-bred person will still further illustrate good taste.-The right vocabulary 1 Translators have notinvariably seen how all-important that is in thework of translation, driving for the most part atidiom or construction; whereas, if the originalbe first-rate, one's first care should be with itselementary particles, Plato, for instance, beingoften reproducible by an exact following, withno variation in structure, of word after word, as

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the pencil follows a drawing under tracing-paper,so only each word or svllnhle be not of falsecolour, to change my illustration a little.

Well! that is because any writer worth trans-lating at all has winnowed and searched throughhis vocabulary, is conscious of the words hewould select in systematic reading of a dictionary.and still more of the words he WOl! ld reject werethe dictionary other than Johnson's; and doingthis with his peculiar sense of the world ever inview, in search of an instrument for the adequateexpression of that, he begets a vocabulary faith-ful to the colouring of his own spirit, and in thestrictest sense original. That living authoritywhich language needs lies, in truth, in itsscholars, who recognising always that everylanguage possesses a genius, a very fastidiousgenius, of its own, expand at once and purifY itsvery elements, which must needs change alongwith the changing thoughts of living people.Ninety years ago, for instance, great mental force,certainly, was needed by Wor(lsworth, to breakthrough the consecrated pbetic associations of acentury, and speak the language that was his,that was to become in a measure the language ofthe next generation. But he did it with the tactof a scholar also. English. for a quarter of acentury past, has been assimilating the phrase-ology of pictorial art; for half a century, thephraseology of the great German metaphysicalmovement of eighty years ago; 111 part also the

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language of mystical theology: and none butpedants will regret a great consequent increase ofIts resources. For many years to come its enter-prise may well lie in the naturalisation of thevocabulary of science, so only it be under the eyeof a sensitive scholarship-in a liberal naturalisa-tion of the ideas of science too, for after all thechief stimulus of good style is to possess a full,rich, complex matter to grapple with. Theliterary artist, therefore, will be well aware ofphysical science; science also attaining, in itsturn, its true literary ideal. And then, as thescholar is nothing without the historic sense, hewill be apt to restore not really obsolete or reallyworn-out words, but the finer edge of wordsstill in use: ascertain, communicate, diJcover-words like these it has been part of our" business to to misuse. And still, as languagewas made for man, he will be no authority forcorrectnesses which, limiting freedom of utter-ance, were yet but accidents in their origin; asif one vowed not to say" its," which ought tohave been in Shakespeare; "his" and "herJ,"for inanimate objects, being but a barbarous andreally inexpressive survival. Yet we have knownmany things like this. Racy Saxon mono-syllables, close to us as touch and sight, he willintermix readily with those long, savoursorne,Latin words, rich in "second intention." Inthis late day certainly, no critical process can beconducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of

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~uch eclecticism we have a justifying exampleIII one of the first poets of OHr time. Howillustrative of monosyllabic efl-(~ct, of sonorousJ .at in, of the phraseology of science, of meta-phys1ic, of collo(jlliali.sm even, are the writingsof 1 cnnyson; yet with what a fine, fastidiousscholarship throughout!

A scholar writing for the scholarly, he willof course l:ave something to the willing intelli-gence of his reader. "To go preach to the firstpasser-by," says lVlol1taignc, "to become tutor tothe ign,?ranc~ of .the first I meet, is a thing Iahhor; a tiling, m f:1ct, naturally distressing tothe scholar, who w il l therefore ever be shyof otf~rinI? uncomplimentary assistance to thereader s WIt. To really strenuous minds there isa. pleasurable stimulus in the challenge for a con-trnuous effort on their part, to be rewarded bysecurer and more intimate grasp of the author'ssen~e: Self-restraint, a skilful economy of means,a scesrs ; that too has a beauty of its own; and forthe reader! supposed there will be an a-st he.tir:satisfaction in that frugal closeness of style whichmakes the most of a word, in the exaction. fromevery sentence of a precise relief, in the justspaclllg out of word to thought, in the logic;llIyfilled spac~ conllected always with the deJightfl;'sense of dIfficulty overcome.

DitTer~nt classes of persons, at ditlcrcnr times,I~lake, of cOll.rse, very various demands uponliterature. Still, scholars, 1 Suppose, and not

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only scholars, but all di.sinterested lovers ofbooks, will always look to It, as to all other fineart, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge; from acertain vulgarity in the actual w?rld.. A rerfectpoem like Lycidas, a perfect fictIOn Iike }!-smon1,the perfect handling of a theory like Ne",:man sIdea q/ a Uniwrsity, has for them something ofthe uses of a religious "retreat." Here, then,with a view to the central need of a select few,those" men of a finer thread" who have formedand maintain the literary ideal, everything, everycomponent element, will have u.ndergone exacttrial, and, above all, there will be no .un-characteristic or tarnished or vulgar decoration,permissible ornament being for the. mos~ pa~tstructural, or necessary. As the pa1l1ter 111hispicture, so the artist in his ?ook, aims at t~eproduction by honourable artifice of a peculiaratmosphere. "The artist," says SC~1i~!cr," m~ybe known rather by what he omits ; and 111literature, too, the true artist may be best .'recognised by his tact of omission. For to thegrave. reader words too are grave; and theornamental word, the figure, the accessory formor colour or reference, is rarely content to die tothought precisely at t!1e ri~h~ moment, l~,ut ",:il1inevitably linger awhtle, stlTnn~ a l~ng bral.n~wave" behind it of perhaps qUIte allen associa-tions.

Just there, it may be, is the detri?lentaltendency of the sort of scholarly attentiveness

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STYLEof mind I am recommending. But the trueartist allows for it. TIe will remember that, asthe very word ornament indicates what is initself non-essential, so the "olle beauty" of allliterary sty le is of its very essence, and inde-pendent, in prose and verse alike, of all remov-able decoration; that it may exist in its fullest!ustre, as ir? Flallhert',s Madame Bouary, forinstance, or in Stendhal s Le Rouge et Le Noir,in ~ composition. utterly ~~adorned, with hardlya single suggestIOn of VISibly beautiful things.Parallel,. allusion, the allusive way generally, theflowers III the garden :-hc knows the narcoticforce of these upon the negligent intelligenceto which any diversion, literally, is welcome, anyvagrant intruder, because one can go wander-ing away with it from the immediate subject.Je~lo~s, if he have a really quickening motivewithin, of all that does not hold directly tothat, of the facile, the otiose, he will neverdepart from the strictly pedestrian process, unlesshe gains a ponderable something thereby. Evenassured of its congruity, he will still question itsserviceableness. Is it worth while, can weaflord, to attend to just that, to just that figureor li~erary reference, just then? - Surplusage Ihe will dread that, as the runner on his muscles.For in truth all art does but consist in the re-moval of surplusage, from the last finish of theger~~engraver ldowing away the last particle ofinvisible dust, hack to the earliest divination of

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the finished work to be, lying somewhere, ac-cordillg to M ichelungelo's fancy, in the rough-hewn block of stone.

And what applies to figure or flower mustbe understood of all other accidental or remov-able ornaments of writing whatever; and not ofspecific ornament only, but of all that latentcolour and imagery which language as suchcarries in it. A lover of words for their ownsake, to whom nothing about them is unim-portant, a minute and constant observer of theirphysiognomy, he will be on the alert not onlyfor obviously mixed metaphors of course, but forthe metaphor that is mixed in all our speech,though a rapid use may involve no cognitionof it. Currently recognising the incident, thecolour, the physical elements or particles inwords like absorb, consider, extract, to take thefirst that occur, he will avail himself of them,as further adding to the resources of expression.The elementary particles of language will berealised as colour and light and shade throughhis sc1}olarly living in the full sense of them.Still opposing the constant degradation oflanguage by those who use it carelessly, hewill not treat coloured glass as if it wereclear; and while half the world is using figureunconsciously, will be fully aware not only ofall that latent figurative texture in speech, butof the vague, lazy, half-formed personification-a rhetoric, depressing, and worse than nothing,

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because it has no really rhetorical motive--which plays so large a part there, and, as inthe case of mort.~.ostentatious ornament, scrupu-lously exact of It, from svll.ihle to syllable, itsprecise value.

So far I have been speaking of certain con-ditions of the literary art arising out of themedium or material in or upon which it works,the essential qu~lities of lallguage and its apti-tudes for contingent ornamentation, matterswhich defin? scholarship as science and goodtaste respectively. They are both subservient~o ~ more intima~e quality of good style: moremtrrnate, as comIng nearer to the artist him-self. The otiose, the facile, surplusage: whyare these abhorr.ent .to the true literary artist,except because, 111 literarv as in all other artstructure is all-important, felt, or painfully missed:everywhe~e ? -v-that architectural conception ofwork. which fore~ees the. end in the beginningand ~ever loses Sight of It, and in every part isconscious of all the rest, till the last sentence?oe~ but, with undiminished vigour, unfold and~ustlfy the ~rs.t-~ condition of literary art, which,III .con~radtstJllct,on to another quality of theartist himself to be spoken of later, I shall callthe necessity of mind ill style.

An acute philosophical writer, the late DeanMansel (a writer whose works illustrate theliterary beauty there may be in closeness andwith obvious repression or economy of a' fine

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rhetorical gift) wrote a Look, of fascinating pre-cision in a very obscure subject, to show that allthe technical laws of logic are but means of secur-ing, in each and all of its apprehensions, theunity, the strict identity with itself, of th~ ~p-prehending mind. All the laws of good wntmgaim at a similar unity or identity of the mindin all the processes by which the word isassociated to its import. The term is right, andhas its essential beauty, when it becomes, in amanner, what it signifies, as with the names ofsimple sensations. To give the phrase, thesentence, the structural member, the entire com-position, song, or essay, a similar unity withits subject and with itself :---style is in theright way when it tends towards that. Alldepends upon the original unity, the vitalwholeness and identity, of the minatory appre-hension or view. So much is true of all art,which therefore requires always its logic, itscomprehensive reason-insight, foresight, retro-spect, in simultaneous action --true, most of all,of the Fterary art, as heing of all t1~e art~ mostclosely cognate to the abstract ,.ntelhgellce.Such logical coherency may be evidenced notmerely in the lines of co~position as a ~hol~,but in the choice of a single word, while It

by no means inter~eres. with, bu.t .may evenprescribe, much vanety, III the bUilding of thesentence for instance, or in the manner, argu-mentative, descriptive, discursive, of this or that

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part or member of the entire design. Theblithe, crisp sentence, decisive as a child's ex-pression of its needs, may alternate with thelong-contending, v icr or iouslv intricate sentence;the sentence, born with the jntegrity of a singleword, relieving the sort of sentence in which, ifyou look closely, YOIlcan see much contrivance,milch adjustment, to hring a highly qualifiedmatter into compass at one view. For theliterary architecture, if it is to be rich andexpressive, involves not only foresight of the endin the beginning, but also development orgrowth of design, in the process of execu-tion, with many irregularities, surprises, andafterthoughts; the contingent as well as thenecessary being subsumed under the unity ofthe whole. As truly, to the lack of sucharchitectural design, of a single, almost visual,image,. vigorously infnrmingan entire, perhapsvery intricate, composition, which shall be~ustere, ornate, argumentative, f;lIlci ful, yC"t truefrom ~rst to last to that vision within, maybe attributed those weaknesses of conscious orunconscious repetition of word, phrase. motive,o! member of the whole matter, indicating, asFlaubert was aware, an original structure inthought not organically complete. With suchforesight, the actual conclusion will most oftenget itself written out of hand, before, in themore obvious sense, the work is finished. Withsome strong and leading sense of the world, the

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tight hold of which secures true composition andnot mere loose accretion, the literary artist, Isuppose, goes on considerately, setting joint tojoint, sustained by yet restraining the productiveardour, retracing the negligences of his firstsketch, repeating his steps only that he maygive the reader a sense of secure and restful pro-gress, readjusting mere assonances even, thatthey may soothe the reader, or at least not in-terrupt him on his way; and then, somewherebefore the end comes, is burdened, inspired,with his conclusion, and betimes delivered ofit, leaving off, not in weariness and because hefinds himselF at an end, hut in all the freshness ofvolition. . His work now structurally complete,with all the accumulating effect of secondaryshades of meaning, he finishes the whole up tothe just proportion of that ante-penultimate con-clusion, and all becomes expressive. The househe has built is rather a body he has informed.And so it happens, to its greater credit, that thebetter interest even of a narrative to be re-counted, a story to be told, will often be in itssecond reading. And though there are instancesof great writers who have been no artists, anunconscious tact sometimes directing work inwhich we may detect, very pleasurably, manyof the effects of conscious art, yet one of thegreatest pleasures of really good prose literatureis in the critical tracing out of that consciousartistic structure, and the pervading sense of it

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as we read. Yet of poetic literature too; for,ill truth, the kind of constructive intelligcncehere supposed is one of the f~lrJl)S of the im-agi nation.

That is the special function of mind, in style.Mind and soul :-hard to ascertain philosophic-ally, the distinction is real enough practically,for they of tell interfere, are sometimes in conflict,with each Of her. Blake, in the LIst century, isan instance of preponderating soul, embarrassed,at a loss, in an era of preponderating mind. Asa quality of style, at all events, soul is a fact, incertain writers-the way they have of ahsorbinglanguage, of attracting it into the peculiar spir itthey are of, with a subtlety which makes theactual result seem like some inexplicable inspira-tion. By mind, the literary artist reaches us,through static and objective indications of designif. his work, legihle to all. By soul, he reacheslIS, somewhat capriciously perhaps, one and notanother, through vagrant sympathy and a kindof immediate contact. Mint! we cannot choosebut approve where we rccognise it; soul mayrepel us, not because we misund erstnnd it. Theway in which theological interests sometimesavail themselves of language is perhaps the bestillustration of the force I mean to indicategenerally 111 literature, by the word soul.A rdent reI igio\ls persuasion may exist, maymake its way, without flnding any equivalentheat in language: or, again, it may enkindle

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words to various degrees, and when it reallytakes hold of thrill doubles its force. Religioushistory presents many remarknhle instances inwhich, through 110 mere phrase-worship, anunconscious literary tact has, for the sensitive,laid open a privileged pathway from one toanother. "The altar-fire," people say, "hastouched those lips!" The Vulgate, the EnglishBihle, the English Prayer-Book, the writings ofSwedenborg, the Tracts for the Times :-there,wOehave instances of widely different and largelydiffused phases of religious feeling in operationas SOli] in style. But something of the samekind acts with similar power in certain writersof quite other than theological literature, onbehalf of some wholly personal and peculiarsense of theirs. Most easily i'llustrated bytheological literature, this quality lends toprofane writers a kind of religious influence.At their best, these writers become, as we saysometimes, " prophets"; such character depend-ing on the effect not merely of their matter, butof their matter as allied to, in « electric afllnity "with, peculiar form, and working in all cases byan immediate sympathetic contact, on whichaccount it is that it may be called soul, asopposed to mind, in style. And this too isa faculty of choosing and rejecting what iscongruous or otherwise, with a drift towardsunity-unity of atmosphere here, as there ofdesign--solll securing colour (or perfume, might

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we say?) as mind secures Iorm, the latter beingessentially finite, the lorruer vaglle or intiuite, asthe influence of a living- p<?rsoll is practicallyinfin itc. There are some to whom nothing hasany real interest, or real mcan inp , except asoperative in a given persnll; and it is they whobest appreciate the quality of soul in literary art.They seem to know a penon, in a honk, andmake W:1y by intuition: yd, although they thusenjoy the completeness of a persona I information,it is still a characteristic of soul, in this sense oft he word, that it docs hut suggest what cannever be uttered, not as beillg ditIerent from, ormore obscure than, what actually gets said, butas containing that plenary substance of whichthere is only one phase or facet in what is thereexpressed. 1

If all high things have their martyrs, GustaveFlaubert might perhaps rank as the martyr ofI iterary style. In his printed correspondence, acurious series of letters, written in his twcnty-fifth year, records w hat seems to have been hisone other passion-a series of letters which, withits fine casuistries, its firmly repressed anguish,its tone of harmonious grey, and the sense ofdisillusion in which the whole matter ends,might have been, a few slight changes supposed,one of his own fictions. Writing to M adame X.certainly he does display, hy "taking thought"mainly, by constant and delicate pondering, as inhis love for literature, a heart really moved, but

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I\.PPR ECTI\.,},lONS

still more, and as the pledge of that emotion, aloyalty to his work. Madame X., too, is aliterary artist, and the best gifts he can send herare precepts of perfection in art, counsels for theeffectual pursuit of that better love. In hislove-letters it is the pains and pleasures of art heinsists 011, its solaces: he communicates secrets,reproves, encourages, with a view to that.Whether the lady was dissatisfied with suchdivided or indirect service, the reader is notenabled to. s~e; hut sees that, on Flaubcrr's partat least, a ItvlOg person could be no rival of whatwas, from first to last, his Ieadi ng paSSIOn, asomewhat solitary and exclusive one.

I m~Jst scold you (he writes) for one thing, which shocks,~call.);IIJses m!", the SJ1l~1I concern, namely, YOIl show for artJust now. As regard~ glory he it so: there, J approve. Hiltfor art !---t~le o~le thing ill life that is good and real--can YOIlcompare with It an earthly love ?---prdi:-r the adoration of arelative beauty to the cult us of the true beauty? Wcll ! I tellyou the truth. That is r he aile thing good in me: the onething I have, to me evt irnahle. For yourself, YOIl blend withthe beautiful a heap of alien things, the useful, the agreeahle,what not? ---

The only way not II) he unhappy is to shut yourself up inart, and crlunt everything else as nothing. Pride takes theplace (If all beside w hen it is established on a larfTe basis.Work! God wills it. That, it seems to me, is dear.'---I am reading over ;lgain the iFruid, certain verses of which

I repeat to myself to sat iet y. Tha-e are phrases there whichstay in one's head, by which I find myself beset, as with thosemusical airs which are for ever returning, and cause you pain,you love them so mur h. I observe Ihat I no longn laughmuch, and am no longer depressed, f am ripe. You talk ofmy serenity, and envy me. It lIlay well surprise YOll. Sick,

l8

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il ritated, the prey a thollsand t imcs a (by of cruel pain,continue my labour like a true workil1~-man, who, with sleevesturned liP, in the sweat of his hIOW, bears away at his anvil,never troubling hifllsc!1 w lu-t hcr it r.rins or blows, for hail orthunder. I was not like that fOfl1wrly. 'The change ha,taken place naturally, though Ill)' will has counted for solliethingill the matter.-

Those who wr ire in goofl style are some times accused ofa neglect of ideas, :111" of the J1I,;,:t1 e n-l, a~ if the end of t hephy~~cian were ~()mcthing els~ r han 1H':lling, "/" till' p"inter r hanpalnting--as if the end of ar t wcr c lI(lt, hefole all else, theheautiful.

What, then, did Flaubcrt understand bybeauty, in the art he pursued with so muchfavour, with so much self-command r Let ushear a sympathetic commentator :-

Possessed of an absolute belief that t hr-rc exists hut one wayof expressing one thing, one word to call it hI', one adjectiveto 'illalify, one verb to animate it, he gal't~ himself to super-human labour for t lu: discovery, ill every phrase, of that WOld,that verb, that epithet. III this way, he helievcd in somernvsterious harmony of expression, and when a tI lie wordseemed to him to lack euphouv still went Oil scekill~~ another,with invincible ratienrt", certain that he had not yet got, holdof the uniqur word, ... A thousand preoccupations wouldbeset him at the same moment, alwnvs w ir h rhis desperatecr-r t it udc fixed ill his spirit; Amollg all the expressions ill thew or ld, all forms and tur ns of expression, there is but one- -ouefor III, one mode to express what I want to s:'y.

The one word for the one thing, the onethought, amid the mult itude of words, terms,that might just do: the problem of style wasthere !--the unique word, phrase, sentence,paragraph, essay, or song, absolutely proper tothe single mental presentation or vision within.

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APPR Eel ATIONS

1n that perfect justice, over and above the manycontingent and removable beauties with whichbeautiful style may charm us, but which it canexist without, independent of them yet dexter-ously availing itself of them, omnipresent ingood work, in function at every point, fromsingle epithets to the rhythm of a whole book,lay the specific, indispensable, very intellectual,beauty of literature, the possibility of whichconstitutes it a fine art.

One seems to detect the influence of a philo-sophic idea there, the idea of a natural economy,of some pre - existent adaptation, between arelative, somewhere in the world of thought,and its correlative, somewhere in the world oflanguage--both alike, rather, somewhere in themind of the artist, desiderative, expectant, invent-ive-meeting each other with the readiness of"soul and body reunited," in Blake's rapturousdesign; and, in fact, Flaubert was fond of givinghis theory philosophical expression.-

TIH're are no I:W:llltirlll thollghts (he would !i."ly) withoutbeautiful (j:lrtllS, and conversely. As it is impossible to extractfrom a physical bllUy the qun lit ies which really constitute it--colour, extension, ;111<\the like without •.e(\ucing it ro a hollowahsrract inn, ill a worrl, without destroying it ; just so it is irn-possible to detach the form from the idea, for the idea olllyexists by virtue of tire fo! Ill.

1\11 the rccognised flowers, the removableornaments of literature (including harmony andease in reading aloud, very carefully considered

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STYI,E

hy him) counted, certainly; fi)r these too arepart of the actual value of w hat one says. Butstill, after all, with Flallhert, the search, theunwearied research, was not for the smooth, orwinsome, or f()rcihle word, as Stich, as with falseCiceronians, hut quite simply and honestly, fort he word's adjustmellt to its mealling. The firstcondition of this must he, of course, to knowY(lurself, to have a~ccrt:l ined YOllr own senseexactly. Then, if we suppose an artist, he saysto the reader,-I want you to see precisely whatl see. J nto the mind sensitive to "form," aflood of random sounds, colours, incidents, is everpenetrating from the world without, to become,hy sympathetic selection, a part of its very struc-ture, and, in turn, the visible vesture and expres-sion of that other world it sees so steadily within,nay, alre:Hly with a partial conformity thereto,to be refined, enlarged, corrected, at a hundredpoints; and it is just thcre,just at those doubtfulpoints that the function of style, as tact or taste,intervenes. The unique term will come morequickly to one than another, at one time thananother, according also to the kind of matter inquestion. Quickness and slowness, case anticloseness alike, have nothing to do with theartistic character of the true word found at last.As there is a charm of ease, so there is also aspecial charr.n in the signs of discovery, of effortand contentton towards a due end, as so oftenwith Flaubert himself---in the style which has

3 I

APPRECIATIONS

been pliant, as only obstinate, durable metal canhe, to t he in hercnt perplexities and rcctlsancy ofa certain difficult thought.

If Flaubert had not told us, perhaps weshould never have guessed how tardy and painfulhis own procedure really was, and after readinghis confession may think that his almost endlesshesitation had milch to do with diseased nerves.Often. perhaps, the felicity supposed will be theproduct of a happier, a more exuberant naturethan Fl.iubert's. Aggravated, certainly, by amorbid physical condition, that anxiety ill" seek-ing the phrase," which gathered all the othersmall ennuis of a really quiet existence into akind of battle, was connected with his lifelongcontention against facile poetry, facile art-art,facile and flimsy; anti what constitutes the trueartist is not the slowness or quickness of theprocess, but the absolute success of the result.As with those labourers in the parable, the prizeis independent of the mere length of the actualday's work. "YOII talk," he writes, odd, tryinglover, to Madame X.-.

"You talk of the exclusiveness of my literary tastes. Thatmight have enabled YOIl to divine what kind of a person I amin the matter of love. I grow so hard to please as a literaryartist, that I am driven to despair. I shall end by nor writinganother line."

4C Happy," he cries, in a moment of discourage-ment at that patient labour, which for him,certainly, was the condit ion of a great snccess-

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Happy those who have no doubts of themselves' wholengthen out, as the pen runs 011, all thaI. flows forth from theirbrains. As for me, I hesitate, J disappoint myself, turn roundUpOIl myself ill dcspire : Iny r ast e is ;111!~lllcnted in proportionas Illy natural vig')llr decrc.iscs, and I alllicr Ill}' 50111over somedubious word OUI of ,,11 proportion to the pleasure I get from awhole p~ge of good wr ir inp, ()lIe would have to live twocenturies to attain a true idea of auv matter whatever. WhatBII/rOIl ~aid is a big hlacpil(,IIlY; g{,;lius is not long-continuedpatience. Still, there is ~"IIH" truth ill the st aremenr, alld morer lmn penl'le r hiu k, especially as rq~;!J'(t9 our own day. Art'art I art' bitter deception! phaurom that glows w:th light,only to lead 0111' 011 to destruction.

Again-1 am growing so peevish about my writing. I am like a

man whose ear is true hut who plays /;d,ely 011 the violin: his/ingns refuse to repro.luce pr er ise ly those soumls of which hehas the inward se nse, 'Then the teals come rolling down fromthe poor scraper's eyes and the how Edls (10m his hand,

Coming- slowly or quickly, when it comes, asit came with so much labour of mind, but alsowith so much lustre, to e\lstave Flnuhcrt , thisdiscovery of the word will he, like all artisticsuccess and felicity, inca pah le of strict analysis:effect of an intuitive coudit ion of mind, it mustbe rccognised by like intuition on the part ofthe reader, and a sort of immediate sense. Ineveryone of those masterly sentences of Flaubertthere was, below all mere contrivance, shapingand afterthought, by some happy instantaneousconcourse of the various filculties of the mindwith each other, the exact apprehcnsion of whatwas nutlet! to carry the meaning. And that itfits with absolute justice will he a judgment of

P.V 33 [)

APPRECIATIONS

immediate sense in the appreciative reader. Weall feel this ill what may be called inspiredtranslation. Well! all language involves trans-lation from inward to outward. In literature, asin all forms of art, there are the absolute and themerely relative or accessory beauties; and pre-cisely in that exact proportion of the term to itspurpose is the absolute beauty of style, prose orverse. All the good qualities, the beauties, ofverse also, are such, only as precise expression.

In the highest as in the lowliest literature,then, the one indispensahle heauty is, after all,truth :--truth to bare fact in the latter, as tosome personal sense of fact, diverted somewhatfrom men's ordinary sense of it, in the former;truth there as accuracy, truth here as expression,that finest and most intimate form of truth, thevraie vl.ritl.. And what an ec1ectic principle thisreally is! employing for its one sole purpose-that absolute accordance of expression to idea-all other literary beauties and excellences what-ever: how many kinds of style it covers.explains, justifies, and at the same time safe-guards r Scott's facility, Flauberr's deeplypondered evocation of « the phrase," are equallygood art. Say what YOll have to say, what youhave a will to say, in the simplest, the mostdirect and exact manner possible, with nosurplusage :--there, is the justification of thesentence so fortunately born, "entire, smooth,and round," that it needs no punctuation, and also

34

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STYLE(that is the point!) of the most elaborate period,if it be right in its elaboration. Here is theofllce of oruarnent : here also the purpose ofrest r aj nt in ornament. As the exponent of truth,that austerity (the beauty, the function, of whichin literature Flauhert understood so well) be-comes not the correctness or purism of themere scholar, but a security against the otiose, ajealous exclusion of what does not really telltowards the pursuit of relief, of life and vigourill the portraiture of one's sense. License again,the making free with rule, if it be indeed, aspeople fancy, a habit of genills, flinging aside ortransforming all that opposes the liberty ofbeautiful production, will be but faith to one'sown meaning. The seeming baldness of LeRouge et Le Noir is nothing in irsel f ; the wildornament of LeI MiI/ral>/c.r is nothing in itself;and the restraint of Flauhcr t , amid a real naturalopulence, only redoubled lieautv-v-t he phrase solarge and so precise at the same time, hard ashronze, in service to the more perfect adaptationof words to their matter. Afterthollghts, re-touch ings, finish, will he of profit on lv xo far ast hey too really serve to hring out the original,init iative, generative, sense ill them.

In this way, according to the well-knownsaying, "The style is the mail," complex orsimple, in his indi vidu.rl itv, his plenary sense ofwhat he really has to say, his sense of the world;all cautions regarding sty le arising out of so many

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APPRECIATIONS

natural scruples as to the medium through whichalone he can expose that inward sense of things,the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks ofrefraction: llothing is to be left there whichmight give conveyance to any matter save that.Style in all its varieties, reserved or opulent,terse, abundant, musical, stimulant, academic, solong- as each is really characteristic or expressive,finds thus its justification, the sumptuous goodtaste of Cicero heing as truly the man himself,

. and not another, justilled, yet insured inalienablyto him, thereby, as would have been his por-trait by Raffaelle, in full consular splendour, onhis ivory chair.

A relegation, you may say perhaps-a relega-tion of style to the subjectivity, the mere caprice,of the individual, which must soon transform itinto mannerism. Not so! since there is, underthe conditions supposed, for those clements of theman, for every lineament of the vision within,the one word, the one acceptable word, recognis-able by the sensitive, by others "who haveintelligence" in the matter, as absolutely as everanythiilg can be in the evanescent and delicateregion of human language. The style, themanner, would be the man, not in his unreasonedand really uncharacteristic caprices, involuntaryor affected, hilt in ahsolutelv sincere apprehensionof what is most real to him. But let us hearour French guide again.---

Styles (says Flauherr's commentator), Sly/u, as so Illany

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peculiar moulds, each ri which hears the mark of a particularwriter, who is to pOllr into it the whole content or his ideas,were no part of his theory. \V hat he believed in was Sty/,.-that is to say, a certain alisolut e and u niquc manner of express-in)!; a thing, in all its intensil)' allt! colour. For him the (0,.,"was the work itself. As in living creatures, the hlood,IlOlirish-ing the body, derer mines its very contour and external aspect,jllst so, to his mind, the matter; the basis, in a work of art, im-posed, necessarily, the uuiqur-, t he just expression, the measure,the rhythm the/arm ill all its charactr-r ist ir-s.

If the style he the man, in all t he colour andintensity o(a vcritahlc apprehension, it will he ina real sense" impersonal."

r said, thinking of hooks like Victor Hugo'sLes Mis/mh/t'J, t hat prose literature was thecharacteristic art of the nineteenth century, asothers, thinking of its triumphs since the youthof Bach, have assi~ned that place to music.M usic and prose literat ure are, in one sense, theopposite terms of art; the art of literaturepresenting to the illlagination, through theintelligence, a range of interests, as free andvar ious as those w hieh music presents to itthrough sense. And certainly the tendency ofwhat has been here said is to bring literature toounder those conditions, by conformity to whichmusic takes rank as the typically perfect art. Ifmusic be the ideal of all art whatever, preciselybecause in music it is impossible to distinguishthe form from the substance or matter, thesubject from the expression, then, literature, hyfinding its specific excellence in the absolute

. correspondence or the term to its import, will be37

APPRECIATIONS

but fulfilling the condition of all artistic qualityin things everywhere, of all good art.

Good art, hut not necessarily great art; thedistinction between great art and good artdepending immediately, as regards literature atall events, not on its form, but on the matter.Thackeray's Esmond, surely, is greater art thanFiJl/;ly Fair; by the greater dignity of its interests.It is on the quality of the matter it informs orcontrols, its compass, its variety, its alliance togreat ends, or the depth of the note of revolt, orthe largeness of hope in it, that the greatnessof literary art depends, as The Divine Comedy,Paradise 1,0.1/, LnMislrahleJ, The English Rihll',are great art. Given the conditions I have triedto explain as constituting good art ;--then, if ithe devoted further to the increase of men'shappiness, to the redemption of the oppressed, orthe enlargement of our sympathies with eachother, or to such presentment of new or oldtruth about ourselves and our relation to theworld as may ennoble and fortify \IS in oursojourn here, or immediately, as with Dante, to

• the glory of God, it will be also great art; if,over and above those qualities I summed lip as.mind and soul-that colour and mystic perfume,and that reasonable structure, it has somethingof the soul of humanity in it, and finds its logical,its architectural place, in the great structure ofhuman life.

1888.