THE QUESTION OF STYLE
of methods. Here, for instance, is a paragraph which embodies the essence of all he has to say on this subject and is well worth pondering upon:
In the highest, as in the lowest literature, the one indispensable beauty is, after all, truth:—truth to bare facts in the latter, as to some personal sense of fact; diverted somewhat from men's ordinary sense of it, in the former: truth there as accuracy, truth here as expression, that finest and most intimate form of truth, the vraie vérité. And what an eclectic principle this really is! Employing for its one sole purpose—that absolute accordance of expression to idea—all other literary beauties and excellencies whatever: how many kinds of style it covers, explains, justifies and, at the same time, safeguards! Scott's facility, Flaubert's deeply pondered evocation of "the phrase" are equally good art. Say what you have to say, what you have a will to say, in the simplest, the most direct and exact manner possible, with no surplusage: there is the
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