importance of this appropriateness, or 'propriety'; of speaking not only
to the purpose but _becomingly_--though the two as (he rightly says) are
often enough one and the same thing. But I will pass on to what has ever
seemed, since I found it in one of Jowett's 'Introductions' to Plato, the
best definition known to me of good style in literature:--

The perfection of style is variety in unity, freedom, ease,
clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note in
the scale of human feelings, without impropriety.

You see, O my modest friend! that your gamut needs not to be very wide,
to begin with. The point is that within it you learn to play becomingly.

Now I started by proposing that we try together to make appropriate,
perspicuous, accurate, persuasive writing a hall-mark of anything turned
out by our English School here, and I would add (growing somewhat
hardier) a hall-mark of all Cambridge style so far as our English School
can influence it. I chose these four epithets _accurate, perspicuous,
persuasive, appropriate_, with some care, of course as my duty was; and
will assume that by this time we are agreed to desire _appropriateness_.
Now for the other three:--

_Perspicuity._--I shall waste no words on the need of this: since the
first aim of speech is to be understood. The more clearly you write the
more easily and surely you will be understood. I propose to demonstrate
to you further, in a minute or so, that the more clearly you write the
more clearly you will understand yourself. But a sufficient reason has
been given in ten words why you should desire perspicuity.

_Accuracy._--Did I not remind myself in my first lecture, that Cambridge