There is a calm suggestive atmosphere, a spirit half-childish
and half-aged about his work. It is the work of a solemn and sensitive
child, who has kept the innocence of his eye for impressions, and yet
brought to his speech the experience, not of years only, but of
centuries. He has many things to teach directly; but even when he is not
teaching so, the air you breathe with its delicate suggestion of faint
odours, the perfect taste in selection, the preferences and shrinkings
and shy delights, all proclaim a real and high culture. And, after all,
the most notable point in his style is just its exactness. Over-precise
it may be sometimes, and even meticulous, yet that is because it is the
exact expression of a delicate and subtle mind. In his _Appreciations_
he lays down, as a first canon for style, Flaubert's principle of the
search, the unwearied search, not for the smooth, or winsome, or
forcible word as such, but, quite simply and honestly, for the word's
adjustment to its meaning. It will be said in reply to any such defence
that the highest art is to conceal art. That is an old saying and a hard
one, and it is not possible to apply its rule in every instance.
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