Forster's own style (simpler now than when he was under the
immediate influence of Dickens, if more slipshod than when repressed by
Landor) is not in essentials better or worse than usual. It is not
always clear nor always idiomatic. On page 120 he tells us that "Scott
did not care to enquire if it was likely that stories of the kind
referred to should have contributed to form a character, or if it were
not likelier still that they had grown and settled round a character
already famous as well as formed." Not to speak of the confusion of
moods and tenses, the phrase "to form a character" has been so long
appropriated to another meaning than that which it has here, that the
sense of the passage vacillates unpleasantly. He tells us that Swift was
"under engagement to Will Frankland to christen _the baby his wife is
near bringing to bed_." Parthenogenesis is a simple matter to this. And
why _Will_ Frankland, _Joe_ Beaumont, and the like? We cannot claim so
much intimacy with them as Swift, and the eighteenth century might be
allowed to stand a little on its dignity. If Mr. Forster had been
quoting the journal to Stella, there would be nothing to say except that
Swift took liberties with his friends in writing to her which he would
not have ventured on before strangers. In the same odd jargon, which the
English journals are fond of calling American, Mr.
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