say against other people, hold your slanderous tongue."

An anonymous criticism carries no more weight than an anonymous letter,
and should therefore be looked upon with equal mistrust. Or do we wish
to accept the assumed name of a man, who in reality represents a
_societe anonyme_, as a guarantee for the veracity of his friends?

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the
unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others. I find
whole passages in my works wrongly quoted, and it is only in my
appendix, which is absolutely lucid, that an exception is made. The
misquotation is frequently due to carelessness, the pen of such people
has been used to write down such trivial and banal phrases that it goes
on writing them out of force of habit. Sometimes the misquotation is due
to impertinence on the part of some one who wants to improve upon my
work; but a bad motive only too often prompts the misquotation--it is
then horrid baseness and roguery, and, like a man who commits forgery,
he loses the character for being an honest man for ever.

Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is a more reliable key to
character than the physiognomy of the body. To imitate another person's
style is like wearing a mask. However fine the mask, it soon becomes
insipid and intolerable because it is without life; so that even the
ugliest living face is better. Therefore authors who write in Latin and
imitate the style of the old writers essentially wear a mask; one
certainly hears what they say, but one cannot watch their
physiognomy--that is to say their style. One observes, however, the
style in the Latin writings of men _who think for themselves_, those who
have not deigned to imitate, as, for instance, Scotus Erigena, Petrarch,
Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, etc.

Affectation in style is like making grimaces. The language in which a
man writes is the physiognomy of his nation; it establishes a great many
differences, beginning from the language of the Greeks down to that of
the Caribbean islanders.

We should seek for the faults in the style of another author's works, so
that we may avoid committing the same in our own.

In order to get a provisional estimate of the value of an author's
productions it is not exactly necessary to know the matter on which he
has thought or what it is he has thought about it,--this would compel
one to read the whole of his works,--but it will be sufficient to know
_how_ he