of style with
which it was written was false from beginning to end. For surely no
style can be permanently attractive that is not simple.

_Simplicity_ must be the first element of literary art. This assertion
will no doubt run counter to the common belief. Most persons have an
impression of something called style in writing,--as they have an
impression of something called architecture in building,--as if it were
external, superadded, whereas it is in truth the very basis and law of
the whole. There is the house, they think, and, if you can afford it,
you put on some architecture; there is the writing, and a college-bred
man is expected to put on some style. The assumption is, that he is less
likely to write simply. This shows our school-boy notions of culture. A
really cultivated person is less likely to waste words on mere
ornamentation, just as he is less likely to have gingerbread-work on his
house. Good taste simplifies. Men whose early culture was deficient are
far more apt to be permanently sophomoric than those who lived through
the sophomore at the proper time and place. The reason is, that the
habit of expression, in a cultivated person, matures as his life and
thought mature; but when a man has had much life and very little
expression, he is confused by his own thoughts, and does not know how
much to attempt or how to discriminate. When such a person falls on
honest slang, it is usually a relief, for then he uses language which is
fresh and real to him; whereas such phrases in a cultivated person
usually indicate mere laziness and mental undress. Indeed, almost all
slang is like parched corn, and should be served up hot, or else not at
all.

But it is evident that mere simplicity of style is not enough, for there
is a manner of writing which does not satisfy us, though it may be
simple and also carefully done. Such, for instance, is the prose style
of Southey, which was apparently the model for all American writing in
its day. We see the result in the early volumes of the North American
Review, whose traditions of rather tame correctness were what enabled us
to live through the Carlyle epoch with safety. The aim of this style was
to avoid all impulse, brilliancy, or surprise,--to be perfectly
colorless; it was a highly polished smoothness, on which the thoughts
slid like balls. But style is capable of something more than smoothness
and clearness; you see this something more when you turn from Prescott
to Mo