To illustrate this psychological distinction between the sense of beauty as inherent in style, and style as mere force and clearness, I instance further only this sentence from Mr. W. D. Howell’s Italian sketches, describing a side wheel steamer in motion: “The wheel of the steamer was as usual chewing the sea, and finding it unpalatable, and making vain efforts at expectoration.” This is the _ne plus ultra_ of a _pseudo_ literary style, of affected and strained literary art. An ugly metaphor, forcible and clear enough, is relentlessly pursued to its ugliest conclusion. Here is style in pin feathers, and we are glad to remember that it was writ in callow youth. It brings “the mind by a bound to the desired conception,” but this does not sanction it as fine art, for it is utterly without taste and beauty.
I believe then from considering the previous examples—and they might be indefinitely extended—that the main function of literary art is not intelligibility, and that pleasure in style in its specific quality does not arise out of economy of attention, but it is a direct communication of pleasant æsthetic emotion artistically conveyed. Intelligibility is a regulative by-law of art, but it is neither standard nor goal. Literary art is then a compromise between intellectual and emotional motives, between sense and sensibility. The natural choice and order of words for easiest apprehension is rarely the artistic order, as every _littérateur_ knows full well. It is, for example, simplest and clearest to repeat the best and exact word, yet the literary artist avoids, and rightly, the repetition of words in the same sentence or paragraph. Thus also, while, as Mr. Spencer suggests, rhythm and euphony may often help sense, yet I believe they as often distract from it. We often tend to turn over in a very senseless way words and verses which please the ear. As language is both an organ for meaning and for beauty, literary art, like architectural, is always a compromise between utility and beauty, that is, neither literature nor architecture are pure and perfectly independent arts. However, it is possible that poetic license may, as has already been done to some extent in English, ultimately develop a pure poetic language, entirely distinct from the utilitarian product, and bound by none of its practical rules; then and then only will literature become a pure art.