for him synonymous with style. And so, for the sake of argument, he was ready to assert that Tom Davies might have written The Conduct of the Allies.
Johnson, in thus criticizing Swift, reveals what was the aim of his own style, and by its opposite enlightens us about Swift's. The truth is that Swift's method of writing was at once more subtle and more just, if less nobly decorated, than Johnson's. That is to say, he was all for structure and not for ornament. Logic of thought, economy of phrase—these are the guiding principles of his prose. It is his great merit to have given a new force to the common forms of speech, to have set his words in so precise an order that the stress always falls where the sense demands it. His prose is not sonorous, save in pages; it is frequently inaccurate, as any pedant may see for himself. He depends not at all for his effect upon a curious vocabulary. He is as remote from the flamboyancy of his Elizabethan ancestors as from the prim elegance of Addison. So his style is inevitably clear, direct and appropriate. There is, so to
