Speaking at the distribution of prizes at King's College on
Tuesday evening, Professor Dicey offered the students some advice as to the formation of style. He did not profess to instruct them how to be eloquent or witty, but rather how to attain the valuable art of expressing themselves in clear and accurate language. To this end he counselled them to dismiss all artificial notions of style from their minds, and take for their models such writers as Sir James FitzJames Stephen—a conspicuous instance of the effort to write just as one would speak—or Jeremy Bentham, who defined the whole of a good style to lie in the choice of "the same word for the same thing and a different word for a different thing." We note with surprise that Professor Dicey's remarks are vehemently attacked in the editorial columns of the Daily Ncw•s as irreconcilable with the essential requirements of literary style. But Professor Dicey, as we have seen, was not addressing himself to aspirants to literary distinction, but merely to those who wished to express themselves clearly and well. Surely there is such a thing as a good, as apart from a literary, style. We cannot all write like Virgil, of whom it was happily said that he disdained to say a plain thing in a plain way. The disastrous results of the wholesale imitation of Browning, Meredith, and Stevenson are enough in them- selves to justify Professor Dicey's plea for simplicity and directness.
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