"These considerations have led straight to the great the central matter of subject; and inextricably interwoven with it are the subsidiary points of form and style both of which ought as it were to spring naturally out of the particular theme chosen for representation.
Form might perhaps for present purposes be defined as the order in time and importance in which the incidents of the narrative are grouped; and style as the way in which they are presented not only in the narrower sense of language but also and rather as they are grasped and coloured by their medium the narrator's mind and given back in his words. It is the quality of the medium which gives these incidents their quality; style in this sense is the most personal ingredient in the combination of things out of which any work of art is made. Words are the exterior symbols of thought and it is only by their exact use that the writer can keep on his subject the close and patient hold which "fishes the murex up" and steeps his creation in unfading colours."