It
is often considered, both by writers and readers, that fine language
makes fine writers; yet no one supposes that fine colours make a fine
painter. The COPIA VERBORUM is often a weakness and a snare. As Arthur
Helps says, men use several epithets in the hope that one of them may
fit. But the artist knows which epithet does fit, uses that, and
rejects the rest. The characteristic weakness of bad writers is
inaccuracy: their symbols do not adequately express their ideas. Pause
but for a moment over their sentences, and you perceive that they are
using language at random, the choice being guided rather by some
indistinct association of phrases, or some broken echoes of familiar
sounds, than by any selection of words to represent ideas. I read the
other day of the truck system being "rampant" in a certain district;
and every day we may meet with similar echoes of familiar words which
betray the flaccid condition of the writer's mind drooping under the
labour of expression.
Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are
as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that
writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality.
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