I have throughout used Style in the narrower sense of expression rather
than in the wider sense of "treatment" which is sometimes affixed to
it. The mode of treating a subject is also no doubt the writer's or the
artist's way of expressing what is in his mind, but this is Style in
the more general sense, and does not admit of being reduced to laws
apart from those of Vision and Sincerity. A man necessarily sees a
subject in a particular light--ideal or grotesque, familiar or
fanciful, tragic or humorous, he may wander into fairy-land, or move
amid representative abstractions; he may follow his wayward fancy in
its grotesque combinations, or he may settle down amid the homeliest
details of daily life. But having chosen he must be true to his choice.
He is not allowed to represent fairy-land as if it resembled Walworth,
nor to paint Walworth in the colours of Venice. The truth of
consistency must be preserved in his treatment, truth in art meaning of
course only truth within the limits of the art; thus the painter may
produce the utmost relief he can by means of light and shade, but is
peremptorily forbidden to use actual solidities on a plane surface.
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