STYLE, used for manner of writing, from the Latin atylus, the same word with the Greek cr7t;Aos a "pillar," or "column." The Romans gave that name to an iron bodkin having a sharp point, with which they were accustomed to write by exaration, or scratching, on their wax-covered tablets or note-books ; and irom the instrument of writing, the term was transferred to the writing itself, and that too considered in reference not to the form of the characters (which would have been the more immediate transition), but to the mode of expression. Among the Romans, however, the term, in this figurative application of it, retained always considerably more of its antecedent meaning than it does with us. We say not only style of writing and style of speaking, but style of painting, style of architecture, style of dress, style of anything in which form or manner is conceived to be, in however slight a degree, expressive of taste or senthoent—if even this much of distinction still remains between what is called style and mere manner in the widest or loosest sense.
Style, in writing or speaking, may of course mean a bad style as well as a good style. Yet when the word stands alone, we always under stand it in the latter senso.—just as when we speak of expression in painting or in music we mean just or forcible expression. Thus, Swift has " l'roper words in proper places make the true definition of a Ptylu." This, however, is merely to tell us, what is sufficiently obvious, that the art of expressing thought by language consists in two things first, the selection of words; second, their collocation or arrangement. That to constitute a good style, both this selection and this collocation must be proper, there can be no doubt ; the only question is, what constitutes propriety as to such matters. Style has been sornetimee considers) as nothing more than the image or outward expression el thought, as its produce or creation in the same sense in which it may Le said that the impression upon the wax is the creation of the seal; and it has hence been assumed that all that is necessary for the ensuring of a style of any degree of excellence is the possession of n corresponding power of thought. But a little reflection will satisfy llf that this is an insufficient explanation. Of two men equal in powen of mind, and equally in possession of a subject, nothing is mon common than that the one should be able to expound it much mon clearly and effectively than the other. Language is an instrument the tide of which must be learned like that of any other instrument. Styli is rather the vehicle than the mere expression of thought; and the thought may be present where the vehicle is wanting. To seen i extent, also, it may be said to be the dreg* of thought, or that which ornaments and sets off' thought, not only by the added charms o sound, but by other powers which are inherent In words, and of whicl unexpressed thought knows nothing. As there are " thoughts thai
breathe," so there are " words that burn "—that by their asaociatiou influence may be detected in the style of nearly every one of the more remarkable writers who have subsequently appeared among us. At the same time, however, examples of altogether a different character were also producing their effects ; and the rude vigour of Warburton, the saiecte of Sterile and Goldsmith, and, above all, the rapidity, variety, and imaginative splendour of Burke, have all operated power fully in forming the greatest of our later writers. Finally, with all these influences have mingled and co-operated two others which have also been impulsive and generative to a considerable, though not both to the same, extent : on the one hand, the revived study of our old Elizabethan literature ; on the other, the new life and spirit that has been put into literature, as into all things else, by the political and social convulsions of the last fifty years. These two influences, though thus apparently opposite in origin, have proved rather mutually assistant than contradictory.
Purity of style is more intimately connected with many apparently higher things than is commonly supposed. When it is considered, indeed, what the wrong use of a word springs from and implies, the mischief it is apt to occasion is easily understood. It is produced by a confusion of thought, which is propagated wherever the vicious mode of expression prevails, and which, besides the injury done iu the par ticular case, helps generally to impair the habit and the faculty of clear and correct thinking. Yet words, for obvious reasons, have a strong tendency to shift their signification ; if a language were to be merely spoken, and not written, this would be constantly taking place to a very great extent ; the only thing that can check it, that can furnish a practically available standard of the language, is the employment of it in writing. Originally, indeed, the principles upon which it is written must be taken from its spoken form—from the lattd et norma loquendi; but afterwards commonly the spoken language both will be and ought to be rather regulated and controlled by the written language. If it should continue to be otherwise, the language would not improve, but would degenerate towards barbarism ; for there could be no progress in any other direction, in this or in anything else, where the com parative slovenliness and incorrectness of extemporaneous precipitation were allowed to carry it over the best efforts of deliberation and care.