Let us allow that the most expert of
lapidaries is not justified in stealing his settings; but let us still
not forget that the _jewels_ are his, or permit our disapproval of his
laxity of principle to make us unjust to his consummate skill.
CHAPTER X.
STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--HUMOUR AND SENTIMENT.
To talk of "the style" of Sterne is almost to play one of those tricks
with language of which he himself was so fond. For there is hardly any
definition of the word which can make it possible to describe him as
having any style at all. It is not only that he manifestly recognized
no external canons whereto to conform the expression of his thoughts,
but he had, apparently, no inclination to invent and observe--except,
indeed, in the most negative of senses--any style of his own. The
"style of Sterne," in short, is as though one should say "the form
of Proteus." He was determined to be uniformly eccentric, regularly
irregular, and that was all. His digressions, his asides, and his
fooleries in general would, of course, have in any case necessitated
a certain general jerkiness of manner; but this need hardly have
extended itself habitually to the structure of individual sentences,
and as a matter of fact he can at times write, as he does for the most
part in his _Sermons_, in a style which is not the less vigorous for
being fairly correct.
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