vigorous forward man who struck out the rough notion, though it was
the wise and meditative man who improved upon it and elaborated it,
and whom posterity reads. Some strong writer, or group of writers,
thus seize on the public mind, and a curious process soon
assimilates other writers in appearance to them. To some extent, no
doubt, this assimilation is effected by a process most intelligible,
and not at all curious--the process of conscious imitation; A sees
that B's style of writing answers, and he imitates it. But
definitely aimed mimicry like this is always rare; original men who
like their own thoughts do not willingly clothe them in words they
feel they borrow. No man, indeed, can think to much purpose when he
is studying to write a style not his own. After all, very few men
are at all equal to the steady labour, the stupid and mistaken
labour mostly, of making a style. Most men catch the words that are
in the air, and the rhythm which comes to them they do not know from
whence; an unconscious imitation determines their words, and makes
them say what of themselves they would never have thought of saying.
Everyone who has written in more than one newspaper knows how
invariably his style catches the tone of each paper while he is
writing for it, and changes to the tone of another when in turn he
begins to write for that. He probably would rather write the
traditional style to which the readers of the journal are used, but
he does not set himself to copy it; he would have to force himself
in order NOT to write it if that was what he wanted. Exactly in this
way, just as a writer for a journal without a distinctly framed
purpose gives the readers of the journal the sort of words and the
sort of thoughts they are used to--so, on a larger scale, the
writers of an age, without thinking of it, give to the readers of
the age the sort of words and the sort of thoughts--the special
literature, in fact--which those readers like and prize. And not