The limitations of the French, the Spanish, the Italian, or the Austrian schools had not enslaved him in youth and hampered the free development of his individuality.

He had studied them all; he chose from them all their superiorities; their excellences he blended into a system of his own.
It might be called the Cleggett System.
The Frenchman is an intellectual swordsman; the basis of his art is a thorough knowledge of its mathematics.

Upon this foundation he superimposes a structure of audacity.

But he often falls into one error or another, for all his mental brilliancy.

He may become rigidly formal in his practice, or, in a revolt from his own formalism, be seduced into a display of showy, sensational tricks that are all very well in the studio but dangerous to their practitioner on the actual dueling ground.
The Italian, looser, freer, less formal, more individual in his style, springing from a line of forbears who have preferred the thrust to the cut, the point to the edge, for centuries, is a more instinctive and less intellectual swordsman than the Frenchman.