A. Exactly what do you mean by style?

B. Questions on sentence structure.

1. From any given essay, group together sentences which are long, short,
loose, periodic, balanced, simple, compound; note those peculiar, for
any reason, to Huxley.

2. Stevenson says, "The one rule is to be infinitely various; to
interest, to disappoint, to surprise and still to gratify; to be ever
changing, as it were, the stitch, and yet still to give the effect of
ingenious neatness."

Do Huxley's sentences conform to Stevenson's rule? Compare Huxley's
sentences with Stevenson's for variety in form. Is there any reason for
the difference between the form of the two writers?

3. Does this quotation from Pater's essay on Style describe Huxley's
sentences? "The blithe, crisp sentence, decisive as a child's expression
of its needs, may alternate with the long-contending, victoriously
intricate sentence; the sentence, born with the integrity of a single
word, relieving the sort of sentence in which, if you look closely, you
can see contrivance, much adjustment, to bring a highly qualified matter
into compass at one view."

4. How do Huxley's sentences compare with those of Ruskin, or with those
of any author recently studied?

5. Are Huxley's sentences musical? How does an author make his sentences
musical?

C. Questions on words.

1. Do you find evidence of exactness, a quality which Huxley said he
labored for?

2. Are the words general or specific in character?

3. How does Huxley make his subject-matter attractive?

4. From what sources does Huxley derive his words? Are they every-day
words, or more scholarly in character?

5. Do you find any figures? Are these mainly ornamental or do they
re-enforce the thought?

8. Are there many allusions and quotations? Can you easily recognize the
source?

7. Pater says in his essay on Style that the literary artist "begets
a vocabulary faithful to the colouring of his own spirit, and in the
strictest sense original." Do you find that Huxley's vocabulary suggests
the man?

8. Does Huxley seem to search for "the smooth, or winsome, or forcible
word, as such, or quite simply and honestly, for the word's adjustment
to its meaning"?

9. Make out a list of the words and proper names in any given essay
which are not familiar to you; write out the explanation of these in the
form of notes giving any information which is interesting and relevant.

D. General questions on style.

1. How