statesman, or whether strength or activity be most needed for an athlete. Both are essential, and neither excellence will supersede necessity for the other. If you have nothing to say, there is no manner of saying it well; and if not well said, your something is as good as nothing. For Stevenson, the question of style was the most pressing. His mind was already, as it continued to be, swarming with any number of projects; he was always acting 'some fragment from his dream of human life'; the storehouse of his imagination was full to overflowing, and the question was not what to say but how to say it. Moreover, a singular delicacy of organisation gave him a love of words for their own sake; the mere sound of 'Jehovah Tsidkenu' gave him a thrill (it does not thrill me!); he was sensitive from childhood to assonance and alliteration, and in his later essay upon the 'technical elements of style' shows how a sentence in the Areopagitica involves a cunning use of the letters P V F. Language, in short, had to him a music independently of its meaning. That, no doubt, is one element of literary effect, though without a fine ear it would be hopeless to decide what pleases; and the finest ear cannot really explain what are the conditions of pleasing.
