It may be asked, of course, whether the true thinker, who will always
form the soul of the true author, will not be so much occupied with
what he has to say, that it will appear to him a trivial thing to
spend great effort on embellishing the form in which he delivers it.
Literature, to be worthy of the name, must, it is true, deal with
noble matter--the riddle of our existence, the great facts of life,
the changing passions of the human heart, the discernment of some deep
moral truth. It is easy to lay too much stress upon the mere garment
of thought; to be too precise; to give to the arrangement of words an
attention that should rather be paid to the promotion of fresh ideas.
A writer who makes this mistake is like a fop who spends his little
mind in adorning his person. In short, it may be charged against the
view of literature which is taken in calling it an Art, that, instead
of making truth and insight the author's aim, it favors sciolism and a
fantastic and affected style. There is, no doubt, some justice in the
objection; nor have we in our own day, and especially amongst younger
men, any lack of writers who endeavor to win confidence, not by adding
to the stock of ideas in the world, but by despising the use of plain
language.
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