Theoretically, of course, one ought always to try for the best word.  But practically, the habit of excessive care in word-selection frequently results in loss of spontaneity; and, still worse, the habit of always taking the best word too easily becomes the habit of always taking the most ornate word, the word most removed from ordinary speech.  In consequence of this, poetic diction has become latterly a kaleidoscope, and one’s chief curiosity is as to the precise combinations into which the pieces will be shifted.  There is, in fact, a certain band of words, the Praetorian cohorts of Poetry, whose prescriptive aid is invoked by every aspirant to the poetic purple....  Against these it is time some banner should be raised....  It is at any rate curious to note that the literary revolution against the despotic diction of Pope seems issuing, like political revolutions, in a despotism of his own making;

and he adds a note that this is the more surprising to him because so many Victorian poets were prose-writers as well.

Now, according to our theory, the practice of prose should maintain fresh and comprehensive a poet’s diction, should save him from falling into the hands of an exclusive coterie of poetic words.  It should react upon his metrical vocabulary to its beneficial expansion, by taking him outside his aristocratic circle of language, and keeping him in touch with the great commonalty, the proletariat of speech.  For it is with words as with men:  constant intermarriage within the limits of a patrician clan begets effete refinement; and to reinvigorate the stock, its veins must be replenished from hardy plebeian blood.

In diction, then, let us acquire all the store we can, rejecting no coin for its minting but only if its metal be base.  So shall we bring out of our treasuries new things and old.

Diction, however, is but a part of Style, and perhaps not the most important part.  So I revert to the larger question, ’What is Style?  What its [Greek:  to ti en einai], its essence, the law of its being?’

Now, as I sat down to write this lecture, memory evoked a scene and with the scene a chance word of boyish slang, both of which may seem to you irrelevant until, or unless, I can make you feel how they hold for me the heart of the matter.

I once happened to be standing in a corner of a ball-room when there entered the most beautiful girl these eyes have ever seen or now—­since they grow dull—­ever will see.  It was, I believe, her first ball, and by some freak or in some premonition she wore black:  and not pearls—­which, I am told, maidens are wont to wear on these occasions—­but one crescent of diamonds in her black hair. Et vera incessu patuit dea. Here, I say, was absolute beauty.  It startled.

     I think she was the most beautiful lady
     That ever was in the West Country. 
     But beauty vanishes, beauty passes....