THE QUESTION OF STYLE
in the best possible way,—that is a rather bigger contract than at first appears. Not merely to express one's thoughts in the clearest possible way, or the most forcible, or the most florid, or the most faultlessly grammatical way. It means a great deal more than any one of these, or all of them taken together. It means the nicest possible compromise between clearness, let us say, on the one hand, and metaphor on the other; or between the realism of colloquial speech, and the dignity of narrative verse; or between the special effects of contrast and a general effect of uniformity. In its widest definition, there is nothing that can be said or written in any language under the sun that has not its special ideal of style,—some one form most appropriate to it: and to some degree the ability to attain approximately this desired norm is an element of the Inborn Talent;—just as marksmanship of any kind is partly a mat-
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