Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE
effect. But the first class of writers have no
monopoly of literary merit. There is a sense in
which Addison is superior to Carlyle ; a sense
in which Cicero is better than Tacitus, in which
Voltaire excels Montaigne: it certainly hes not in
the choice of words ; it lies not in the interest or
value of the matter ; it lies not in force of intellect,
of poetry, or of humour. The three first are but
infants to the three second ; and yet each, in a
particular point of literary art, excels his superior in
the whole. What is that point ?
2. The Web. — Literature, although it stands apart
by reason of the great destiny and general use of its
medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art like
other arts. Of these we may distinguish two great
classes : those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting,
which are representative, or, as used to be said very
clumsily, imitative; and those, Hke architecture,
music, and the dance, which are self-sufficient, and
merely presentative. Each class, in right of this
distinction, obeys principles apart; yet both may
claim a common ground of existence, and it may be
said with sufficient justice that the motive and end
of any art whatever is to make a pattern ; a pattern,
it may be, of colours, of sounds, of changing attitudes,
geometrical figures, or imitative fines ; but still a
pattern. That is the plane on which these sisters
meet ; it is by this that they are arts ; and if it be
well they should at times forget their childish origin,
addressing their intelligence to virile tasks, and per-
forming unconsciously that necessary function of
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