Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/34

 28 Philosophies of Style Buffon's saying, "Le style est I'homme meme," 9 implies almost as much. Ben Jonson had anticipated this statement with his "The style is the image of the mind," 10 and perhaps both Jonson and Buffon had received a hint from Erasmus's "Qualis homo, talis oratio." 11 Truly interpreted, all these statements mean much what DeQuincey means. Yet none of these writers not even De- Quincey saw the possible implications of their statements. It has already become evident, I suppose, that different views of style depend upon different views of what literature is. As al- ready said, to Spencer literature is primarily communication, and as such an important factor in man's social life. It is communica- tion, of course, not merely of facts but also of emotions which we associate with art. For the classicist, literature is representation. This means communication, of course, but the emphasis here is upon the relation between author and work, upon the truth and appropriateness of the representation of the author's conception, while in communication the emphasis is rather upon the relation be- tween medium and reader. For the romanticist, literature is creation, the emphasis being ultimately upon the work itself as a fact whether for the mind of the writer or of the reader. Inas- much as communication does not apply to literature as an art pri- marily, and since its fundamental assumption of the separation of matter and form is also found in representation, our discussion may be limited to the romantic and the classical theories of literature. For the classicist the matter of literature is a very definite thing which literature must represent as truly and beautifully as it can. Literature is, in Pope's words, Nature to advantage drest, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well exprest. 12 The matter, if Pope says truly, is something often thought the universal, in other words and there is no meaning to content be- yond this. The classicist posits a common world of thought, just 9 The Discours surle Style was delivered in 1753. 10 Discoveries, Oratio imago animi. 11 For classical anticipations, see Roberts, Demetrius on Style, p. 174 and note on page 250. 12 Essay on Criticism, w. 297 f. Pope is of course talking about "wit," but I do not think the substitution of "literature" is arbitrary. "With the neo-classicists [wit] was always regarded as of the essence of poetic art. " Spin- garn, Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, p. 259.