STYLE. It is desirable to insist at the outset on the dangers of a heresy which found audacious expression towards the close of the 19th century, namely, that style is superior to thought and independent of it. Against this may be set at once one of the splendid apophthegms of Buff on, "Les idees seules forment le fond du style." Before there can be style there must be thought, clearness of knowledge, precise experience, sanity of reasoning power. A confusion between form and matter has often confused this branch of our theme. Even Flaubert, than whom no man ever gave closer attention to the question of style, seems to dislocate them. For him the form was the work itself : "As in living crea tures, the blood, nourishing the body, determines its very contour and external aspect, just so the matter, the basis, of a work of art imposes, necessarily, the unique, the just expression, the measure, the rhythm, the form in all its characteristics." This ingenious definition seems to strain language beyond its natural limits. If the adventures of an ordinary young man in Paris be the matter of L'Education sentimentale it is not easy to admit that they "imposed, necessarily," such a "unique" treatment of them as Flaubert so superlatively gave. They might have been recounted with feebler rhythm by an inferior novelist, with bad rhythm by a bad novelist and with no rhythm at all by a police-news reporter. What makes that book a masterpiece is not the basis of adventure, but the superstructure of expression. The expression, however, could not have been built up on no basis at all, and would have fallen short of Flaubert's aim if it had risen on an inadequate basis. The perfect union is that between adequate matter and an adequate form. We will borrow from the history of English litera ture an example which may serve to illuminate this point. Locke has no appreciable style ; he has only thoughts. Berkeley has thoughts which are as valuable as those of Locke, and he has an exquisite style as well. From the artist's point of view, therefore,
we are justified in giving the higher place to Berkeley, but in doing this we must not deny the importance of Locke. If we compare him with some pseudo-philosopher, whose style is highly orna mental but whose thoughts are valueless, we see that Locke greatly prevails. Yet we need not pretend that he rises to an equal height with Berkeley, in whom the basis is no less solid, and where the superstructure of style adds an emotional and aesthetic importance to which Locke's plain speech is a stranger. At the same time, an abstract style, such as that of Pascal, may often give extreme pleasure, in spite of its absence of ornament, by its precise and pure definition of ideas and by the just mental impression it supplies of its writer's power and placidity of mind. But whether in the abstract or concrete style, what Rossetti called "funda mental brain-work" must always have a leading place.
When full justice has been done to the necessity of thought as the basis of style, it remains true that what is visible, so to speak, to the naked eye, what can be analysed and described, is an artistic arrangement of words. Language is so used as to awaken impressions, and these are roused in a way peculiar to the genius of the individual who brings them forth. The personal aspect of style is therefore indispensable, and is not to be ignored even by those who are most rigid in their objection to mere ornament. Ornament in itself is no more style than facts, as such, are thought. In an excellent style there is an effect upon our senses of the mental force of the man who employs it. D'Alembert said of Fontenelle that he had the style of his thought, like all good authors. In the words of Schopenhauer, style is the physiognomy of the soul: in the Renaissance phrase, it is mentis character. All these attempts at epigrammatic definition tend to show the sense that language ought to be, and even unconsciously is, the mental picture of the man who writes.