Everything in fine that Goujon did is unified with the
rest of his work and identifiable by the mark of style.
III
What do we mean by style? Something, at all events, very different from
manner, in spite of Mr. Hamerton's insistence upon the contrary. Is the
quality in virtue of which--as Mr. Dobson paraphrases Gautier--
"The bust outlives the throne,
The coin Tiberius"
the specific personality of the artist who carved the bust or chiselled
the coin that have thus outlived all personality connected with them?
Not that personality is not of the essence of enduring art. It is, on
the contrary, the condition of any vital art whatever. But what gives
the object, once personally conceived and expressed, its currency, its
universality, its eternal interest--speaking to strangers with familiar
vividness, and to posterity as to contemporaries--is something aside
from its personal feeling. And it is this something and not specific
personality that style is. Style is the invisible wind through whose
influence "the lion on the flag" of the Persian poet "moves and
marches.
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