"LE STYLE C'EST L'HOMME.*
(TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.")
Slit,—The above still continues to be so invariably quoted as the correct form of a celebrated sentence of Buffon's, that I am moved to beg you to find room for a protest. To pose. in paradox and to arrest the attention rather than capture the judgment has been a besetting sin of literary France since the days of the preeieuses of the h6tel Rambouillet. Buffon, how- ever, was not only a ,master of style but a scientific man,.and when a scientific man uses metaphorical language it is to illuminate, not to confuse, a statement. From this point'of view the quotation as rendered is inadmissible, and, in fact, what Buffon did say was, " Le style est DE l'homme." He is con- trasting (in his "Discours sur le Style," delivered:on Saturday, August 25th, 1753, on the occasion of his reception into the Academie francaise) exterior things with the manner of a man's language about them, the objective with the quality of the subjective description of it :—
"Les otivrages bleu &Tits seroht les seuls qUi passeront In
posteritk. La quantite des connaissances, la singularite des faits, In Louveaute meme des decouvertes ne sont pas de stirs garants de l'immortalite ; si les onvrages qui les contiennent ne.roulent que sur de petits objets, s'ils sont ecrits sans goat, sans noblesse et sans genie, ils periront parce que les connaissances, les faits et les deconvertes s'enlevent aisement, se transportent et gagnent meme a etre mis en (envie par des mains plus habiles : ces chases' sont hors de rhornine, is style est DE 1 'llonone nienie."—(Diclot's corrected edition of Button.) National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, S. W., May 30th.
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