The first shoots and leaves may come up early though the full
growth and flower may be long waited for. These characteristics are
often better put into words by foreign critics than by ourselves, for we
are inclined to take them as a whole and to take them for granted; hence
the trouble experienced by educated foreigners in catching the
characteristics of English style, and their surprise in finding that we
have no authentic guides to English composition, fend that the court of
final appeal is only the standard Of the best use. The words of a German
critic on a Collection of English portraits in Berlin are very happily
pointed and might be as aptly applied to writing as to painting.
"English, utterly English! Nothing on God's earth could be more English
than this whole collection. The personality of the artist (_it happened
that he was an Irishman_), the countenances of the subjects, their
dress, the discreetly suggestive backgrounds, all have the
characteristic touch of British culture, very refined, very high-bred,
very quiet, very much clarified, very confident, very neat, very
well-appointed, a little dreamy and just a little wearisome--the precise
qualities which at the same time impress and annoy us in the English."
This is exactly what might be said of Pater's writing, but that is
full-grown English.
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