ABSTRACT
What Pater would have made of a romance of which these are some of the ingredients can be guessed from the plan and development of 'Marius the Epicurean'. To attempt any comparison with that work, except in respect of the leading idea of both, would be a vain proceeding. Something, indeed, may fitly be said of the style of 'Gaston de Latour', even though it lacked revision. A reviewer(3) has already hazarded the opinion that the sense of style is less present here than in Pater's other books, and that thus he gains in distinction what he loses in elaboration. But what a curious canon it is which supposes that the sense of style is less present when its efforts are less observed, or that distinction is a sign of little elaboration. The reverse is the truth. If Pater's style is easier and less elaborate in this volume - and of parts of it the remark may justly be made - than in any other of his writings, it is because the art of it is more concealed, and therefore more perfect, He was a most conscientious writer - no one, indeed, was more so. He said himself that the essence of all good style was expressiveness, the facility of saying what a man wants to say. The effort was sometimes made too obviously, and where aims are high the failure is all the more manifest. But up to the end of his career his style was as progressive as his thought. He
