ABSTRACT
Nobody, for instance, can doubt that some of the later uncouthnesses of Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Browning are correctly styled affectations. It is absurd to suppose that a writer can be wholly unconscious of mannerisms which have frequently been thrust as it were under his very eyes; and when one sees an author persevering in such eccentricities after these criticisms with rather more energy than before, and in cases where no other eye than his own, however kindly, can discover any advantage in their employment, it seems a fairly safe inference that the writer is obstinately affected. Yet it is no less clear that it is always more or less hazardous to predicate this quality of any man’s style.
