M. Renan's _Histoire d'Israel_ may almost be called skittish. The
French are more tolerant of those excesses than the English. It is a
digression, but he who would fail can reach his end by not taking himself
seriously. If he gives himself no important airs, whether out of a
freakish humour, or real humility, depend upon it the public and the
critics will take him at something under his own estimate. On the other
hand, by copying the gravity of demeanour admired by Mr. Shandy in a
celebrated parochial animal, even a very dull person may succeed in
winning no inconsiderable reputation.
To return to style, and its appropriateness: all depends on the work in
hand, and the audience addressed. Thus, in his valuable Essay on Style,
Mr. Pater says, with perfect truth: {3}
"The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent to the true
literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other arts,
structure is all important, felt or painfully missed, everywhere?--that
architectural conception of work, which foresees the end in the
beginning, and never loses sight of it, and in every part is conscious of
all the rest, till the last sentence does but, with undiminished vigour,
unfold and justify the first--a condition of literary art, which, in
contradistinction to another quality of the artist himself, to be spoken
of later, I shall call the necessity of _mind_ in style.
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