ognise an equal truthfulness in
the subtle indications of great mental agitation, the fleeting
characters of which are far less easy to observe and to reproduce, than
the stationary characters of form and costume. We may often observe how
the novelist or dramatist has tolerable success so long as his
personages are quiet, or moved only by the vulgar motives of ordinary
life, and how fatally uninteresting, because unreal, these very
personages become as soon as they are exhibited under the stress of
emotion: their language ceases at once to be truthful, and becomes
stagey; their conduct is no longer recognisable as that of human beings
such as we have known. Here we note a defect of treatment, a mingling
of styles, arising partly from defect of vision, and partly from an
imperfect sincerity; and success in art will always be found dependent
on integrity of style. The Dutch painters, so admirable in their own
style, would become pitiable on quitting it for a higher.

But I need not enter at any length upon this subject of treatment.
Obviously a work must have charm or it cannot succeed; and the charm
will depend on very complex conditions in the artist's mind. What
treatment is in Art, composition is in Philosophy. The general
conception of the point of view, and the skilful distribution of the
masses, so as to secure the due preparation, development, and
culmination, without wasteful prodigality or confusing want of
symmetry, constitute Composition, which is to the structure of a
treatise what Style--in the narrower sense--is to the structure of
sentences. How far Style is reducible to law will be examined in the
next chapter.

EDITOR.

THE LAWS OF STYLE.

From what was said in the preceding chapter, the reader will understand
that our present inquiry is only into the laws which regulate the
mechanism of Style. In such an analysis all that constitutes the
individuality, the life, the charm of a great writer, must escape. But
we may dissect Style, as we dissect an organism, and lay bare the
fundamental laws by which each is regulated. And this analogy may
indicate the utility of our attempt; the grace and luminousness of a
happy talent will no more be acquired by a knowledge of these laws,
than the force and elasticity of a healthy organism will be given by a
knowledge of anatomy; but the mistakes in Style, and the diseases of
the organism, may be often avoided, and sometimes remedied, by such
knowledge.

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