ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the stylistically endowed critic, the critic of taste and stylistic discretion described in late Victorian theories of style, represents the version of Arnold's politically explicit "best self", another means of endowing the individual with the power to construct a desirable national character, in this case, by naturalizing in style the linguistically manifest, multitudinous forces of modernity. Wright's key point of departure from Spencer lies in his contestation of Spencer's idea that an economical use of Saxon English will eliminate all mediating elements of the author's personality during the process of communication. In English: Past and Present Richard Chenevix Trench proposes a model of linguistic development that figures the historical moment of a foreign word's adoption as the key to its likely assimilation into English. Walter Pater defines scholarship in its broadest sense as that ability to select the best word or passage at the exclusion of others not as fine.
