sensibility, teaches them,
perhaps unconsciously, certain methods of effective presentation, how
one arrangement of words carries with it more power than another, how
familiar and concrete expressions are demanded in one place, and in
another place abstract expressions unclogged with disturbing
suggestions. Every author thus silently amasses a store of empirical
rules, furnished by his own practice, and confirmed by the practice of
others. A true Philosophy of Criticism would reduce these empirical
rules to science by ranging them under psychological laws, thus
demonstrating the validity of the rules, not in virtue of their having
been employed by Cicero or Addison, by Burke or Sydney Smith, but in
virtue of their conformity with the constancies of human nature.

The importance of Style is generally unsuspected by philosophers and
men of science, who are quite aware of its advantage in all departments
of BELLES LETTRES; and if you allude in their presence to the
deplorably defective presentation of the ideas in some work
distinguished for its learning, its profundity or its novelty, it is
probable that you will be despised as a frivolous setter up of manner
over matter, a light-minded DILLETANTE, unfitted for the simple
austerities of science. But this is itself a light-minded contempt; a
deeper insight would change the tone, and help to remove the
disgraceful slovenliness and feebleness of composition which deface the
majority of grave works, except those written by Frenchmen, who have
been taught that composition is an art and that no writer may neglect
it. In England and Germany, men who will spare no labour in research,
grudge all labour in style; a morning is cheerfully devoted to
verifying a quotation, by one who will not spare ten minutes to
reconstruct a clumsy sentence; a reference is sought with ardour, an
appropriate expression in lleu of the inexact phrase which first
suggests itself does not seem worth seeking. What are we to say to a
man who spends a quarter's income on a diamond pin which he sticks in a
greasy cravat? A man who calls public attention on him, and appears in
a slovenly undress? Am I to bestow applause on some insignificant
parade of erudition, and withhold blame from the stupidities of style
which surround it?

Had there been a clear understanding of Style as the living body of
thought, and not its "dress," which might be more or less ornamental,
the error I am noticing would not have spr