ter
rhythmical alertness. It is even doubtful if the innate sonority of a
phonetic system counts for as much, as esthetic determinant, as the
relations between the sounds, the total gamut of their similarities and
contrasts. As long as the artist has the wherewithal to lay out his
sequences and rhythms, it matters little what are the sensuous qualities
of the elements of his material.

The phonetic groundwork of a language, however, is only one of the
features that give its literature a certain direction. Far more
important are its morphological peculiarities. It makes a great deal of
difference for the development of style if the language can or cannot
create compound words, if its structure is synthetic or analytic, if the
words of its sentences have considerable freedom of position or are
compelled to fall into a rigidly determined sequence. The major
characteristics of style, in so far as style is a technical matter of
the building and placing of words, are given by the language itself,
quite as inescapably, indeed, as the general acoustic effect of verse is
given by the sounds and natural accents of the language. These necessary
fundamentals of style are hardly felt by the artist to constrain his
individuality of expression. They rather point the way to those
stylistic developments that most suit the natural bent of the language.
It is not in the least likely that a truly great style can seriously
oppose itself to the basic form patterns of the language. It not only
incorporates them, it builds on them. The merit of such a style as W.H.
Hudson's or George Moore's[199] is that it does with ease and economy
what the language is always trying to do. Carlylese, though individual
and vigorous, is yet not style; it is a Teutonic mannerism. Nor is the
prose of Milton and his contemporaries strictly English; it is
semi-Latin done into magnificent English words.

[Footnote 199: Aside from individual peculiarities of diction, the
selection and evaluation of particular words as such.]

It is strange how long it has taken the European literatures to learn
that style is not an absolute, a something that is to be imposed on the
language from Greek or Latin models, but merely the language itself,
running in its natural grooves, and with enough of an individual accent
to allow the artist's personality to be felt as a presence, not as an
acrobat. We understand more clearly now that what is effective and
beautiful in one language