fluousness, just conceive what your feelings would be after
spending a month's holiday with a merely mellifluous man. If an
author's style has pleased you, but done nothing except make you
giggle, then reflect upon the ultimate tediousness of the man who can
do nothing but jest. On the other hand, if you are impressed by what
an author has said to you, but are aware of verbal clumsinesses in his
work, you need worry about his "bad style" exactly as much and exactly
as little as you would worry about the manners of a kindhearted,
keen-brained friend who was dangerous to carpets with a tea-cup in his
hand. The friend's antics in a drawing-room are somewhat regrettable,
but you would not say of him that his manners were bad. Again, if
an author's style dazzles you instantly and blinds you to everything
except its brilliant self, ask your soul, before you begin to admire
his matter, what would be your final opinion of a man who at the first
meeting fired his personality into you like a broadside. Reflect
that, as a rule, the people whom you have come to esteem communicated
themselves to you gradually, that they did not begin the entertainment
with fireworks. In short, look at literature as you would look at
life, and you cannot fail to perceive that, essentially, the style
is the man. Decidedly you will never assert that you care nothing for
style, that your enjoyment of an author's matter is unaffected by his
style. And you will never assert, either, that style alone suffices
for you.

If you are undecided upon a question of style, whether leaning to
the favourable or to the unfavourable, the most prudent course is to
forget that literary style exists. For, indeed, as style is understood
by most people who have not analysed their impressions under the
influence of literature, there _is_ no such thing as literary style.
You cannot divide literature into two elements and say: This is matter
and that style. Further, the significance and the worth of
literature are to be comprehended and assessed in the same way as the
significance and the worth of any other phenomenon: by the exercise
of common-sense. Common-sense will tell you that nobody, not even a
genius, can be simultaneously vulgar and distinguished, or beautiful
and ugly, or precise and vague, or tender and harsh. And common-sense
will therefore tell you that to try to set up vital contradictions
between matter and style is absurd. When there is a superficial
contradi