Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/243

THE QUESTION OF STYLE. And if this is to be done worthily we must attain our results so far as possible without straying afield for queer, exotic words and phrases. It is, says Lowell, "the secondary intellect which asks for excitement in expression, and stimulates itself into mannerism, which is the wilful obtrusion of self, as style is its unconscious abnegation." And Maupassant, in his well-known preface to Pierre et Jean, wrote in similar strain:

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In regard to vocabulary no better rule