The matter declines to be adorned, and is content with being clearly
stated. I do not know what would occur if the writer of the Money
Article in the _Times_ treated his topic with reckless gaiety. Probably
that number of the journal in which the essay appeared would have a large
sale, but the author might achieve professional failure; in the office.
On the whole it may not be the wiser plan to write about the Origins of
Religion in the style which might suit a study of the life of ballet
dancers; the two MM. Halevy, the learned and the popular, would make a
blunder if they exchanged styles. Yet Gibbon never denies himself a
jest, and Montesquieu's _Esprit des Lois_ was called _L'Esprit sur les
Lois_. M. Renan's _Histoire d'Israel_ may almost be called skittish. The
French are more tolerant of those excesses than the English. It is a
digression, but he who would fail can reach his end by not taking himself
seriously. If he gives himself no important airs, whether out of a
freakish humour, or real humility, depend upon it the public and the
critics will take him at something under his own estimate. On the other
hand, by copying the gravity of demeanour admired by Mr. Shandy in a
celebrated parochial animal, even a very dull person may succeed in
winning no inconsiderable reputation.

To return to style, and its appropriateness: all depends on the work in
hand, and the audience addressed. Thus, in his valuable Essay on Style,
Mr. Pater says, with perfect truth: {3}

"The otiose, the facile, surplusage: why are these abhorrent to the true
literary artist, except because, in literary as in all other arts,
structure is all important, felt or painfully missed, everywhere?--that
architectural conception of work, which foresees the end in the
beginning, and never loses sight of it, and in every part is conscious of
all the rest, till the last sentence does but, with undiminished vigour,