Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/30

 24 Philosophies of Style same image. " And in a similar fashion, sentence structure, figures of speech, and rhythm are explained. This theory is not of much significance for the present paper, and I shall not comment upon it at length. The reader, however, may keep it in mind as a thor- oughly and typically scientific theory, as one that would naturally appeal to the scientific temper, and one that applies in a greater or less degree to most scientific writing. The second theory of style I cannot refer so definitely to any one writer. It is of greater literary interest, for it is distinctly a theory of literary men and has a relation to literary history. I call it the classical theory because of its association with the classical writers of the eighteenth century as well as with later writers of classical tendencies. This theory makes style the dress of thought, and, like the theory of Spencer, it distinguishes sharply between form and content, between style and matter. It differs from the theory of Spencer in that adornment as well as usefulness (if that term may roughly correspond to economy) is a principle. Pope's famous lines are as good a classical interpretation of style as any we may find: True expression, like th' unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon, It gilds all objects but it alters none. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable. At first glance one might suppose that Spencer himself would accept these lines, but the word gilds shows the gap between the two views, even though "it alters none" indicates a strong similarity. Pope is thinking of ornamentation. And Pope's view is the con- ventional one of the eighteenth century. To Dryden it seems that style at times, at least meant little more than a trick which con- ceals its own artfulness. In his preface to Religio Laid, after a dis- cussion of the difference between the style suitable for instruction and that appropriate for passion, he remarks that "a man is to be cheated into passion, but reasoned into truth. " More pertinent is a sentence in a letter to the Earl of Abingdon printed with Eleonora, which refers to the magnificence of words and the force of figures as adorning " the sublimity of thought. "