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A NOTE ON REALISM {16}
Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the student who
does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is
still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will.
Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour,
are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor
simulated. But the just and dexterous use of what qualities we
have, the proportion of one part to another and to the whole, the
elision of the useless, the accentuation of the important, and the
preservation of a uniform character from end to end--these, which
taken together constitute technical perfection, are to some degree
within the reach of industry and intellectual courage. What to put
in and what to leave out; whether some particular fact be
organically necessary or purely ornamental; whether, if it be
purely ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design;
and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so
grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are
questions of plastic style continually rearising. And the sphinx
that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable
riddle to propound.
In literature (from which I must draw my instances) the great
change of the past century has been effected by the admission of
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