" The lion of personality may be painted never so deftly, with
never so much expression, individual feeling, picturesqueness, energy,
charm; it will not move and march save through the rhythmic, waving
influence of style.
Nor is style necessarily the grand style, as Arnold seems to imply, in
calling it "a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain
condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say in such a
manner as to add dignity and distinction to it." Perhaps the most
explicit examples of pure style owe their production to spiritual
coolness; and, in any event, the word "peculiar" in a definition begs
the question. Buffon is at once juster and more definite in saying:
"Style is nothing other than the order and movement which we put into
our thoughts." It is singular that this simple and lucid utterance of
Buffon should have been so little noticed by those who have written in
English on style. In general English writers have apparently
misconceived, in very curious fashion, Buffon's other remark, "le style
c'est l'homme;" by which aphorism Buffon merely meant that a man's
individual manner depends on his temperament, his character, and which
he, of course, was very far from suspecting would ever be taken for a
definition.
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