at least three separable elements, each contributing after its kind to
the effect on our minds. When the general effect is to throw us into a
state of pleasure, it is our habit to qualify the style with an
adjective of praise, selecting the adjective according to the degree
of restraint or of enthusiasm with which we are accustomed to express
our emotions; when the general effect is to throw us into a condition
of boredom or of distaste, we make a corresponding choice of
appropriate adjectives. When we wish to be specially critical we pass
a little way beyond an empirical judgment by pleasure or annoyance and
take into account the degree of harmony between matter and manner. In
such a frame of mind we discount the pleasure obtained from verbal
quips, if these occur in a grave exposition, or that received from
solemn and stately harmonies of language if these be employed on
insignificant trifles. In a condition of unusual critical exaltation
we may even admit an excellence of language and phrasing though these
have as their contents ideas which we dislike, or press towards
conclusions from which we dissent. But if we desire to make an exact
appreciation of literary style, it is requisite to examine separately
the three elements which contribute to the effect produced on us by
any written work. These three elements are the words or raw materials
employed, the building of words into sentences and of sentences into
paragraphs, which may be designated as the architectural work, and,
finally, the ideas conveyed, that is to say, the actual object of the
writing.

Huxley was a wide and omnivorous reader, and so had an unusually large
fund of words at his disposal. His writings abound with quotations and
allusions taken from the best English authors, and he had a profound
and practical belief in the advantage to be gained from the reading of
English. "If a man," he wrote, "cannot get literary culture out of his
Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Hobbes, and
Bishop Berkeley, to mention only a few of our illustrious writers--I
say, if he cannot get it out of these writers, he cannot get it out of
anything." He had at least a fair knowledge of Greek in the original,
and a very wide acquaintance with Greek phrasing and Greek ideas
derived from a study of Greek authors in English versions. He had an
unusual knowledge of Latin, both of the classical writers and of the
early Church fathers and mediaeval writers on s