In endeavoring to secure force by brevity occasions sometimes rise where there is a clash between force and clearness.1 For while clearness demands the presence of particles and explanatory elements that though they articulate the thought tend also to cumber its movement, force demands that these be cut down or dispensed with, as far as may be, in order not to enfeeble the important words. In such cases, when one quality can be secured only at some expense to the other, the question must be decided by the determinate object in view, the writer considering whether that object can best be promoted by fulness of detail or by vigor of impression.2

NOTE. A brief and pointed assertion, like an aphorism or proverb, sets one thinking; an assertion detailed and amplified does one's thinking, as it were, for him. The former is the more forcible, the latter more clear. Emerson's expression, "Hitch your wagon to a star," is striking by its brevity; one remembers it and is stimulated by it; but to think out what it means and how it applies requires some meditation. On the other hand, if it were traced out in some amplified form it would run the risk of becoming tame and platitudinous. Skilful writers, and especially public speakers, generally combine the two ways of expression, the detailed for explanation, the briefer for summing up and enforcing. Compare WHATELEY, Elements of Rhetoric, p. 351.

Force based in Emotion and Will. As related to the writer himself, force in style is the result and evidence of some strong emotion at work infusing vigor into his words. He realizes vividly the truth of what he says, and so it becomes intense and fervid; he has a deep conviction of its importance, and

1 The classic recognition of this clash is Horace's well-known remark:

"brevis esse laboro,

Obscurus fio." - De Arte Poetica, 25.

2 Brevity thus goes deeper than style and relates itself to the organism of subjectmatter. "In order to be brief," says De Quincey, "a man must take a short sweep of view: his range of thought cannot be extensive; and such a rule, applied to a general method of thinking, is fitted rather to aphorisms and maxims as upon a known subject, than to any process of investigation as upon a subject yet to be fathomed.". DE QUINCEY, Essay on Style, Works (Riverside edition), Vol. iv, p. 214.

so it becomes cogent and impressive. Along with this fervor of feeling his will is enlisted; he is determined, as it were, to make his reader think as he does, and to make his cause prevail. Every employment of word and figure is tributary to this.

Genuine force in style cannot be manufactured: if the style has not serious conviction to back it, it becomes contorted; if it has not a vivifying emotion, it becomes turgid. Force is the quality of style most dependent on character.

The writer's culture for force, therefore, is in its deepest analysis a culture of character. To think closely and seriously; to insist on seeing fact or truth for one's self and not merely echo it as hearsay; to cherish true convictions, not mere fashions or expedients of thinking, these are the traits in the culture of character that make for forcible and virile expression.

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III.

Beauty. This third fundamental quality of style is supplementary to the others, that is, not ordinarily to be sought until first clearness and then force are provided for, and not to be cultivated at expense to them. Beauty, however, is just as necessary, and, broadly interpreted, just as universal, as are clearness and force. It is the quality of style which answers to the endeavor to please.

It can easily be seen how real is the occasion for beauty. An idea may be stated with perfect clearness, may make also a strong impression on the reader's mind; and yet many of its details may be an offense to his taste, or crude expression and harsh combinations of sound may impair the desired effect by compelling attention to defective form. Any such disturbing element is a blemish none the less though the reader may not be able to explain or even locate it. His vague sense that the form of expression is crude and bungling, that the thought

therefore is not having free course, is sufficient reason, albeit negative, for seeking a quality of beauty in style, whereby it may be a satisfaction to the reader's taste, as well as to his thought and conviction.

A prevalent misapprehension may here be corrected. Beauty in style is not the same as ornament; it does not necessitate word-painting or imagery or eloquence. The question whether such elaborations shall be introduced belongs to the peculiar susceptibilities of a subject or the individual bent of a writer; the question of beauty, on the other hand, is so fundamental that a definition must be sought for the quality which will fit all types of subject and treatment. It is a requisite of all style, simple as well as elaborate.

Beauty is a quality both negative and positive; to be secured, that is, partly by the pruning away of what is unpleasing and partly by traits peculiar to itself. In this double character it is here analyzed.

Euphony: the Negative Preliminary. As a matter of workmanship, the quality of beauty depends largely on sound: the writer is working to make his words read smoothly, according to his standard of smoothness. An indispensable requisite, therefore, is the education of the ear and the constant test of one's work by reading aloud, thus forming the habit of estimating and balancing sounds. The following are the main aspects of revision thus engendered:

1. A constant detective sense for harsh-sounding words and for combinations or sequences of words hard to pronounce together.

2. Quickness of ear for what are called jingles: recurrences of the same or similar sounds, like an inadvertent rhyme. Much the same effect is produced by too frequent repetition of the same word in a passage. No one can realize, whose attention has not been called to it, how liable every writer is to these unnoticed lapses in sound; they constitute,

after typographical errors, one of the chief kinds of blemish found in reading proof.

3. A matter requiring still finer education both of ear and of critical acumen is a sense for that general tone and movement of the style which, while not definably harsh or jingling, is crude, lumbering, heavy. Not always is this reducible to exact causes; it appears oftenest in some form of monotony, as in a predominance of long words, or sentences of like length and construction, or pet habits of expression.

Harmony: the Positive Element. It is only negatively that euphony, or smoothness of expression, may be regarded as beauty of style. It makes beauty possible by clearing away obstructions, leaving as it were the field open, but the real beauty is something positive, with a character of its own as definite as force or clearness. For this character it is not easy to find an adequate name; the nearest, perhaps, is Harmony, a term here chosen to indicate that fine correspondence of word and movement to the sense and spirit of discourse which is doubtless the vital principle to which beauty in style is reducible.1 The following are the salient ways in which this harmony reveals itself:

:

1. The spontaneous answer of sound to sense; most palpable in prose in the choice of descriptive words, which have a physical reference, but also equally real in the subtler consonance of words to spiritual sentiments and moods.

2. The rhythm of phrase and sentence, a music rising from the finely touched emotion of the writer and the fitting key of the subject-matter. After the measured rhythm (metre) of poetry, this music is most apprehensible in the impassioned sweep of eloquence and the graceful flow of imaginative prose; but rhythm of some kind is equally real and present, though

1 "All beauty is in the long run only fineness of truth, or what we call expression, the finer accommodation of speech to that vision within."-PATER on Style, Appreciations, p. 6.

revealing a different movement, in all well-written discourse, even the most matter-of-fact.

3. Underlying all the foregoing is what may be called the architectonic nature of the style, that artistic structure which is analogous to a crystal, with all its molecules unerringly deposited, or rather to a vital organism, with all its functions answering to one another and contributing each its part to a rounded whole. Just so a satisfying passage in discourse so builds together its parts as to conform in sound, word, and phrase to an organic ideal in the writer's mind.

Beauty based in Imagination and Taste. As related to the writer himself, beauty is the æsthetic quality of style; it is the outcome when the shaping imagination is at work on its keen sense of fact or of organic thought,1 and when the taste has developed a standard of language to which the thoughtorganism spontaneously adjusts itself. A writer's individual type of beauty in style, as it is the highest reach of his literary faculty, is also the slowest to mature; coming as it does with the gradual discovery and discipline of tastes and that sureness of touch which makes the writer aware of his mastery. Beauty, being the æsthetic quality, is preeminently the artistic.

The best discipline for the æsthetic sense in style is familiarizing one's self with what is beautiful in literature and thought. By a law of nature he who dwells habitually among beautiful thoughts will become imbued, in mind and feeling, with their beauty. Here is where the study of good literature renders its service; especially of that literature which has survived fluctuations in fashion and taste and become classic.

1 "For just in proportion as the writer's aim, consciously or unconsciously, comes to be the transcribing, not of the world, not of mere fact, but of his sense of it, he becomes an artist, his work fine art; and good art . . . in proportion to the truth of his presentment of that sense; as in those humbler or plainer functions of literature also, truth truth to bare fact, there is the essence of such artistic quality as they may have."— PATER on Style, Appreciations, p. 6.