THE QUESTION OF CLEARNESS
ful first and ornamental afterwards; and that for the greater part of what we have to say the simplest phrasing is the best, just as the really well dressed man is he whose clothes possess that quiet refinement which does not obtrude. But a scorn of flamboyant neckties and checkerboard trousers is no excuse for going to the opposite extreme of a blue flannel shirt and overalls; and when Stendhal in his intolerance of over elaboration and rhetorical flourish boasted that he formed his own style by daily readings of the Civil Code, he erred as badly on his side as the models he avoided erred on theirs. The best evidence that you are in sound bodily health is that it does not occur to you to think about it; and similarly a healthy literary style is that which does nothing overtly to direct our attention to it.
Now it seems as though the quality of clearness ought to need no definition; as
[182]
