Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/400

Age

In this discussion of him as a man of letters, his lack of some literary qualifications has been indicated; whether he had others has been left without definite opinion, for time and changing tastes to prove; that he possessed one, not alone sufficient, but of great importance, is open to no doubt or qualification, and that is style.

In fuller description of this and how it was secured—whether with ease and facility, like Joaquin Miller's, or with agonies of search and alteration and weighing, like Flaubert's—two statements regarding it will be given. The first is by Alfred Holman, after-