Walter Bagehot

But the Jews who adhered to their law became the Jews of the day, a nation of a firm set if ever there was one.

In modern days, in civilised days, men's choice determines nearly all they do.

But in early times that choice determined scarcely anything.

Everybody was born to a place in the community: in that place he had to stay: in that place he found certain duties which he had to fulfil, and which were all he needed to think of.

The net of custom caught men in distinct spots, and kept each where he stood.

In 1789, when the great men of the Constituent Assembly looked on the long past, they hardly saw anything in it which could be praised, or admired, or imitated: all seemed a blunder--a complex error to be got rid of as soon as might be.

On their very physical organisation the hereditary mark of old times was fixed; their brains were hardened and their nerves were steadied by the transmitted results of tedious usages.

The ages of monotony had their use, for they trained men for ages when they need not be monotonous.

They not only 'bound up' men in groups, not only impressed on men a certain set of common usages, but often, at least in an indirect way, suggested, if I may use the expression, national character.

We cannot yet explain--I am sure, at least, I cannot attempt to explain--all the singular phenomena of national character: how completely and perfectly they seem to be at first framed; how slowly, how gradually they can alone be altered…

We throw aside too much, in making up our images of eras, that which is common to all eras.

The English character was much the same in many great respects in Chaucer's time as it was in Elizabeth's time or Anne's time, or as it is now; But some qualities were added to this common element in one era and some in another; some…

We overlook and half forget the constant while we see and watch the variable.

This writer is very often not the one whom posterity remembers--not the one who carries the style of the age farthest towards its ideal type, and gives it its charm and its perfection.

It was not Addison who began the essay-writing of Queen Anne's time, but Steele; it was the vigorous forward man who struck out the rough notion, though it was the wise and meditative man who improved upon it and elaborated it, and whom…

To some extent, no doubt, this assimilation is effected by a process most intelligible, and not at all curious--the process of conscious imitation; A sees that B's style of writing answers, and he imitates it.

But definitely aimed mimicry like this is always rare; original men who like their own thoughts do not willingly clothe them in words they feel they borrow.

No man, indeed, can think to much purpose when he is studying to write a style not his own.

Most men catch the words that are in the air, and the rhythm which comes to them they do not know from whence; an unconscious imitation determines their words, and makes them say what of themselves they would never have thought of saying.

Everyone who has written in more than one newspaper knows how invariably his style catches the tone of each paper while he is writing for it, and changes to the tone of another when in turn he begins to write for that.

He probably would rather write the traditional style to which the readers of the journal are used, but he does not set himself to copy it; he would have to force himself in order NOT to write it if that was what he wanted.

And not only does the writer, without thinking, choose the sort of style and meaning which are most in vogue, but the writer is himself chosen.

A writer does not begin to write in the traditional rhythm of an age unless he feels, or fancies he feels, a sort of aptitude for writing it, any more than a writer tries to write in a journal in which the style is uncongenial or…

Indeed if he mistakes he is soon weeded out; the editor rejects, the age will not read his compositions.

How painfully this traditional style cramps great writers whom it happens not to suit, is curiously seen in Wordsworth, who was bold enough to break through it, and, at the risk of contemporary neglect, to frame a style of his own.