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  ...scorned or have not known that common ground of language on which the author and his readers should stand together. My purport here is only with Thackeray, and I say that he stands always on that common ground. He quarrels with none of the laws. As the lady who is most attentive to conventional propriety may still have her own fashion of dress and her own mode of speech, so had Thackeray very manifestly his own style; but it is one the correctness of which has never been impugned. I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.   I am not sure but that the same may be said of an author's written language. Only, where shall we find an example of such perfection? Always easy, always lucid, always correct, we may find them; but who is the writer, easy, lucid, and correct, who has not impregnated his writing with something of that personal flavour which we call mannerism? To speak of authors well known to all readers--Does not _The Rambler_ taste of Johnson; _The Decline and Fall_, of Gibbon; _The Middle Ages_, of...   Trollope, Anthony

Excerpt from Thackeray · This quote is about dress · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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