t towards its ideal type, and gives it its charm and its
perfection. It was not Addison who began the essay-writing of Queen
Anne's time, but Steele; it was the vigorous forward man who struck out
the rough notion, though it was the wise and meditative man who
improved upon it and elaborated it, and whom posterity reads. Some
strong writer, or group of writers, thus seize on the public mind, and
a curious process soon assimilates other writers in appearance to them.
To some extent, no doubt, this assimilation is effected by a process
most intelligible, and not at all curious--the process of conscious
imitation; A sees that B's style of writing answers, and he imitates
it. But definitely aimed mimicry like this is always rare; original men
who like their own thoughts do not willingly clothe them in words they
feel they borrow. No man, indeed, can think to much purpose when he is
studying to write a style not his own. After all, very few men are at
all equal to the steady labour, the stupid and mistaken labour mostly,
of making a style. Most men catch the words that are in the air, and
the rhythm which comes to them they do not know from whence; an
unconscious imitation determines their words, and makes them say what
of themselves they would never have thought of saying. Everyone who has
written in more than one newspaper knows how invariably his style
catches the tone of each paper while he is writing for it, and changes
to the tone of another when in turn he begins to write for that. He
probably would rather write the traditional style to which the readers
of the journal are used, but he does not set himself to copy it; he
would have to force himself in order NOT to write it if that was what
he wanted. Exactly in this way, just as a writer for a journal without
a distinctly framed purpose gives the readers of the journal the sort
of words and the sort of thoughts they are used to--so, on a larger
scale, the writers of an age, without thinking of it, give to the
readers of the age the sort of words and the sort of thoughts--the
special literature, in fact--which those readers like and prize. And
not only does the writer, without thinking, choose the sort of style
and meaning which are most in vogue, but the writer is himself chosen.
A writer does not begin to write in the traditional rhythm of an age
unless he feels, or fancies he feels, a sort of aptitude for writing
it, any more than a writer tries to write in a journal