pulsion and pertinence, leaping forth nimbly, each taking its place
promptly, because naturally and necessarily. Through fusion and close
coherency and dependence, the flow is at once smooth and lively. The
grace as well as the strength of the living physical body depends
much, nay primarily, on the joints. So with the body of a good
writer's thoughts, that is, his mode of utterance. To the linking of
sentences and paragraphs (the links being self-wrought out of inward
sap) is due much of the buoyancy and force of style. The
springiness of the joints depends, in the body, on the quality of its
nervous life; in style, much on the marrow and validity of the
thoughts. By a sprightly stream of thought, fed from a full spring of
feeling, the current of words is kept lively and graceful. Words,
sentences, paragraphs, cannot be held closely, symmetrically,
attractively together, without the unction invisibly distilled from
brisk mental movement, movement starting from sentiment fresh and
true. Soul is the source of style. Not sensibility alone is a
prerequisite for style: the sensibility must be _active_, made active
by the fine aspiring urgency which ever demands the best. A good style
will have the sheen communicated by lubrication from within, not the
gloss of outward rubbing.

That style varies in pitch and tone according to the subject treated
ought to be self-evident. In every page of "The Merry Wives of
Windsor" we recognize Shakespeare not less palpably than in "King
Lear." In his "Recollections of Charles Lamb" De Quincey writes, "Far
be it from me to say one word in praise of those--people of how narrow
a sensibility--who imagine that a simple (that is, according to many
tastes, an unelevated and _unrhythmical_) style--take, for
instance, an Addisonian or a Swiftian style--is _unconditionally_
good. Not so: all depends upon the subject; and there is a style,
transcending these and all other modes of simplicity, by infinite
degrees, and, in the same proportion, impossible to most men, the
rhythmical, the continuous--what in French is called the
_soutenu_--which, to humbler styles stands in the relation of an organ
to a shepherd's pipe. This also finds its justification in its
subject; and the subject which _can_ justify it must be of a
corresponding quality--loftier--and therefore, rare."

I quote De Quincey because he has written more, and more profoundly as
well as more copiously, on style than any writer I know.