He watched the style of each man with the closest attention, examining the length of the paragraphs, of the sentences, of the words, the variety of the vocabulary, the choice of adjectives and adverbs, the employment of superlatives, the selection of a heading, the nicety of adjustment between the thought to be expressed and the language employed for its expression.
If he chanced in the course of his reading to run across any apt phrase in regard to literary style he would get one of us to type a number of copies and send one to each of the editorial writers on The World. The following were sent from Wiesbaden:
"Thiers compares a perfect style to glass through which we look without being conscious of its presence between the object and the eye." (From Abraham Hayward's "Essay on Thiers.")
"Lessing, Lichtenberger, and Schopenhauer agreed in saying that it is difficult to write well, that no man naturally writes well, and that one must, in order to acquire a style, work STRENUOUSLY … I have tried to write well."(Nietzsche.)
J. P. was never tired of discussing literary style, of making comparisons between one language and another from the point of view of an exact expression of an idea, or of the different SOUND of the same idea expressed in different languages. For instance, he asked us once during an argument about translations of Shakespeare to compare the lines:
"You are my true and honorable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart."
with the German:
"Ihr seid mein echtes, ehrenwertes Weib,
So teuer mir, als wie die Purpurtropfen
Die um mein trauernd Herz sich drangen."
and the opening words of Hamlet's soliloquy with the German:
"Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage."