Morning journal and courier., 1889-02-26
SOME QUALITIES OF STYLE.
Several Hints from a Master Of Liter
 arv EXnreRaaon.

Several Hints from a Master or Lfter-
 ary Expression.
 Waiter Pater in the December Fortnightly.l
 That living authority with language needs lies, in truth, in it's scholars, who, recognix- ing always that every language possesses e genius. very fastidious genious, of its own, expand at once and purify its very elements which must needs change along with the changing thoughts of living people. Ninsty years ago, for instance, great mental force, certainly, was needed by Wordsworth to
 break through the consecratic poetic asso- citations of century and speak the language
 that was his and was to become, in a meas
 ure, the language of the next genera tion.
 But he did it with the tact of 8 scholar
 also. English, for a gu arter of a century
 past, has been assimilating the phraseology
 of pictorial art; for @ half a century, the
 phrassology of the great German metaphysi-
 cal movement of eighty years ago; in part also the language of mystical theology; and none but pedants will regreat great consequent increase of its resources. Fer many years to come its enterprise may we'll lie in tho naturalization of the vocabulary of science, 50 only it be under the eye of 0 sensitive scholarship; in liberal nauraliza- ton of the ideas of science, too, for after all the chief stimulus of good style is to possess full, rich, complex matter to grap- pie with.
 The literary artist therefore, will be well aware of physical science; science, too, at- | taining in its turn its true literary ideal. And then, as the scholar is nothing without I the historic sense, he will be apt to restore ! not really obsolete or really worn out l words, but the finer edge of words still in ~knSv@ 1 words like these it has been part of our 1 tbusiness" to misuse. And still as Ian gusge was made for man, he will be no authority for correctness which, limiting l freedom of utteranoe, were yet but acci- ! dents in their origin; as if one vowed not I Shakespeare; "his" and "hers," for inani- l mate things, being but barbarous and I really inexpensive survival. Yet we have known many things like that. Racy Saxon l monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will intermix readily with those long, savorsome Latin words, rich in "ee- cond intention" In this late day certainly ! no critical process can be conducted reason 1 ably without electicism. Of such electicisn we have justifving example in one of the i first poets of our time, How illustrative of l monosyliabio effect, of sonorous Latin, of l the phraseology of science, of metaphysic, or 1 collouuislism even, are the writings Of Tens i nyson: vet with what fine, fastidious l scholarship throughout L. 1 A scholar writing for the scholarly, he 1 will of course leave something to the wlihng intelligence of his reader. To go pIeacI Io the frst passsr by," says Montaigne, to be- come con s tutor to the ignorance of the first I
 naturally Vg distressing to the scholar. who
 will therefore ever be shy of offering uncom- 1 nlimentary assistance to the reaaers wls. 1 ra -saiiv strenuous minds there is pleasur- able stimulus in the challenge for contin- mons effort on their part, to be rewarded by securer and more intimate grasp of the au- thor's sense. Self restraint, skillful econo- nay of means-ascesis- too, has {