What A Book Requires And Of Style

William Edward Lecky, in: A Memoir of the Right Hon. William Edward Hartpole Lecky, Elisabeth Lecky, 1909, ch. II., pp. 48 & 49:

A book requires endless patience, for I at least rarely finish a chapter without finding it necessary to recast it thoroughly. There are also innumerable little difficulties of style, arrangement, and research, which no one but an author can know, and there falls upon one not infrequently an utter brain weariness, a despondency which is very painful. But by long patience something really comes at the end. As far as my own experience goes, the chief motive of writing seems to be that one has thought much, has crowds of arguments, tendencies, speculations, &c., floating, often half formed, through the mind, which it at last becomes almost necessary to rescue from a subjective to an objective state. To develop one's being to its full capacity is, perhaps, on the whole, the least vain thing in this vain world. (From a letter, August 28, 1866)

I have always cared much for style, and have endeavoured to improve my own by reading a great deal of the best English and French prose. In writing, as in music, much of the perfection of style is a question of ear; but much also depends on the ideal the writer sets before himself. He ought, I think, to aim at the greatest possible simplicity and accuracy of expression, at vividness and force, at condensation. The last two heads will usually be found to blend; for condensation, when it is not attained at the sacrifice of clearness, is the great secret of force. I should say, from my own experience, that most improvements of style are of the nature either of condensation or of increased accuracy and delicacy of distinction.