2. Individual Persons and Human Life: Is the author skilful in descriptions
of personal appearance and dress? Does he produce his impressions by full
enumeration of details, or by emphasis on prominent or characteristic
details? How often and how fully does he describe scenes of human activity
(such as a street scene, a social gathering, a procession on the march)? 3.
How frequent and how vivid are his descriptions of the inanimate background
of human life--buildings, interiors of rooms, and the rest? 4. Does the
author skilfully use description to create the general atmosphere in which
he wishes to invest his work--an atmosphere of cheerfulness, of mystery, of
activity, or any of a hundred other moods?

STYLE. Style in general means 'manner of writing.' In the broad sense it
includes everything pertaining to the author's spirit and point of
view--almost everything which is here being discussed. More narrowly
considered, as 'external style,' it designates the author's use of
language. Questions to be asked in regard to external style are such as
these: Is it good or bad, careful or careless, clear and easy or confused
and difficult; simple or complex; terse and forceful (perhaps colloquial)
or involved and stately; eloquent, balanced, rhythmical; vigorous, or
musical, languid, delicate and decorative; varied or monotonous; plain or
figurative; poor or rich in connotation and poetic suggestiveness;
beautiful, or only clear and strong? Are the sentences mostly long or
short; periodic or loose; mostly of one type, such as the declarative, or
with frequent introduction of such other forms as the question and the
exclamation?

POETRY. Most of what has thus far been said applies to both Prose and
Poetry. But in Poetry, as the literature especially characterized in
general by high Emotion, Imagination, and Beauty, finer and more delicate
effects are to be sought than in Prose. Poetry, generally speaking, is the