The Dutch painters, so admirable in their own
style, would become pitiable on quitting it for a higher.
But I need not enter at any length upon this subject of treatment.
Obviously a work must have charm or it cannot succeed; and the charm
will depend on very complex conditions in the artist's mind. What
treatment is in Art, composition is in Philosophy. The general
conception of the point of view, and the skilful distribution of the
masses, so as to secure the due preparation, development, and
culmination, without wasteful prodigality or confusing want of
symmetry, constitute Composition, which is to the structure of a
treatise what Style--in the narrower sense--is to the structure of
sentences. How far Style is reducible to law will be examined in the
next chapter.
EDITOR.
THE LAWS OF STYLE.
From what was said in the preceding chapter, the reader will understand
that our present inquiry is only into the laws which regulate the
mechanism of Style. In such an analysis all that constitutes the
individuality, the life, the charm of a great writer, must escape.
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