according to the view, matter-of-fact, or scientific, or poetic. It is for the writer's complete furnishing not to insulate himself in one narrow outlook, but to welcome all phases of contemplation, so far as he can educate his nature thereto. And the value of a general education in many things, as distinguished from a mere specialist's training, is here evident; for each subject, though but outlined, opens a new region of ideas.1

The cultivation of such varied ways of looking at things brings. good to the writer in several important respects.

In the first place, it makes any view of truth more satisfying and conclusive to combine it, whether implicitly or avowedly, with other views. No object's significance can be exhausted from a single direction or angle. Just as in viewing natural objects, our judgment of their solidity and distance is due to the fact that our two eyes are directed upon them from slightly different angles; so in contemplating objects of the mind, we need to see more

than one side in order rightly to see one side.

Secondly, such catholicity of interest renders an important service to the writer in freeing him from the mere standard of likes and dislikes. He learns to like men for what is likeable in them ; to judge facts and systems from their own intrinsic points of view. Not that he thereby becomes less positive in his judgments of right and wrong; nor need he become insincere and weakly tolerant of everything. But he learns to form judgments and reach conclusions unwarped by prejudices. Tolerant and charitable he indeed becomes, but wisely so; and at the same time he is ever in readiness to correct himself when he finds himself in error.

Thirdly, such acquaintance with various sides is a potent influence against what is recognized as a deplorable tendency in men of every profession, the tendency, as it is called, to “talk shop.” By this is meant adhering in everything only to the narrow and technical dialect of one's own calling. Many a clergyman or lawyer or business man is as unapt at accommodating his mind to what lies outside of his narrow beat as was the gardener who

1 See Bulwer, "Hints on Mental Culture," Caxtoniana, Essay X.

was found splitting wood with a spade. To such men the whole world has only a theological or legal or mercantile aspect; they must "talk shop" if they talk at all. In like manner the literary man may fall inadvertently into a certain formal literary dialect. He needs continually to seek the universal vernacular, to commend himself to every man by his ability to express truth as that man would fain express it, with the added wealth of his broader and deeper culture.

Test of Truth at First Hand. Mental alertness and catholicity of interest, good in themselves, may after all produce a mere luxuriance of grotesque opinions, without the wholesome corrective, always at hand, of subjecting all discoveries to the test of hardheaded common sense. With all his achievements in observation and the inferences derived therefrom, the writer needs to cherish a healthy spirit of conservatism and caution, returning continually to views at first hand and to the plain appearance of things, so as not to be misled by hearsay, or by a specious profundity, or by an exuberant fancy.

NOTE. A good illustration of what is here inculcated is the following anecdote of Webster and Choate, related by E. G. Parker, in his "Golden Age of American Oratory" : —

"We heard Webster once, in a sentence and a look, crush an hour's argument of the curious workman; it was most intellectually wire-drawn and hairsplitting, with Grecian sophistry, and a subtlety the Leontine Gorgias might have envied. It was about two car-wheels, which to common eyes looked as like as two eggs; but Mr. Choate, by a fine line of argument between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee, and a discourse on the 'fixation of points' so deep and fine as to lose itself in obscurity, showed the jury there was a heaven-wide difference between them. 'But,' said Mr. Webster, and his great eyes opened wide and black, as he stared at the big twin wheels before him, 'Gentlemen of the jury, there they are, - look at 'em'; and as he pronounced this answer, in tones of vast volume, the distorted wheels seemed to shrink back again into their original similarity, and the long argument on the 'fixation of points' died a natural death."

Let us notice some of the ways in which this habit of testing truth at first hand influences the writer for good.

In the first place, a writer habituated to common-sense judgments is kept from the barren pedantry of mere bookishness. He is determined to see things for himself and to portray as he sees; and this spirit of honest sincerity aerates his learning, and gives his work the natural color. "The reason why so few good books are written," says Walter Bagehot,1 "is that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum. The habits best

fitted for communicating information, formed with the best care, and daily regulated by the best motives, are exactly the habits which are likely to afford a man the least information to communicate. ... The critic in the 'Vicar of Wakefield' lays down that you should always say that the picture would have been better if the painter had taken more pains; but in the case of the practised literary man, you should often enough say that the writings would have been much better if the writer had taken less pains. He says he has devoted his life to the subject-the reply is, "Then you have taken the best way to prevent your making anything of it.' Instead of reading studiously what Burgersdicius and Æncesidemus said men were, you should have gone out yourself, and seen (if you can see) what they are."

Secondly, this sober common-sense judgment is a regulator to the writer's constructive faculty. It often happens that an imperfectly balanced mind, once awake to the wealth and interest of its world, finds its very constructiveness and suggestiveness a snare. Ideas are adopted and maintained not so much because they are true as because they are striking. Observation has become keen, but it has not been subjected to its necessary corrective. It is important, therefore, to form the habit of testing truth at first hand, as a rational and sobering palliative of the unruly imagination; not for the sake of less vividness, but for the sake of more and solider

1 Bagehot, "Literary Studies," Vol. I. p. 137.

truth. Such a habit is in no way a check on freedom of thought and fancy; it supplies rather the conservative and sincere quality which gives the work permanent value.

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II.

Habits of Thought. It cannot well be proposed under this head to enter the region of individual abilities, so different in different men; the intention is rather to mention certain practical habits of thought needed by every writer, whatever the peculiar bent of his mind, to steady and invigorate the approaches to literary composition; habits that, far from eclipsing any mental talent, make all the writer's gifts more assured and self-perfecting.

The Habit of seeking Clearness. - First both in order and in importance is to be named the habit of sternly thinking the vagueness and obscurity out of a subject, and committing one's self only to what can be made plain. The sincere writer will move only in the region where his vision is clear. Of course not all subjects are equally susceptible of clearness; there are some in which the thought itself requires a special sense or scholarship to comprehend. But such thought finds its own readers, and the writer who can wield it finds his appointed sphere. But inside his sphere, whatever it is, he has a duty, to use terms definitely, unambiguously, and consistently, and to be sure the thought he represents is such as he can, to his own mind at least, work out into a lucid presentation.

Let us trace some of the good effects of this habit.

In the first place, the habit of seeking clearness keeps the writer from being content with hasty or ill-considered work. Many a course of thought has imposed on both author and reader by a kind of mysterious obscurity, wherein some indeterminate idea, very large and lofty, seemed involved and almost revealed; whereas, if the thought were relentlessly analyzed, it would prove neither new nor remarkable. Such learned obscurity is one favorite means of literary charlatanism. There is vagueness, also, due to indolence; it is easier to set down a thing only half cleared up than it

is to probe it sternly to the bottom. But such half-done thinking cannot be sincere, nor can it be permanent. Writing that has life has a conscience.

Secondly, the habit of seeking clearness is an influence to keep the writer from attacking subjects that are beyond him. This is a frequently mentioned tendency of young writers. Easily carried away by the surface-ideas of a new subject, they soon find themselves committed beyond their depth. The strenuous resolve to be clear, to subject every thought rigorously to the test of intelligibility, will do much to keep the writer within his own sphere. The note appended to Milton's unfinished poem on The Passion is a suggestive indication how justly he estimated his own youthful powers: "This Subject the Author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished."

The Habit of seeking Order. Closely akin to the foregoing is the habit of striking for the central and nucleus thoughts of a subject, round which whatever is subordinate or illustrative may range itself, and thus lay the foundation of a logical plan.

Plan in invention begins farther back than the individual project. To be natural and unlabored it requires a formed habit. Let the writer train his mind in weighing thoughts, seeking where they begin and end, how they are grounded, what are their component parts and what their progress; and the work of planning in an individual case is in large part provided for. The subject strikes naturally into the logical order and proportion; the plan makes itself, being born in a mind that can tolerate only order and system.

This and the previously mentioned habit, once thoroughly formed, are a potent influence against the superficial tendencies due to rapid writing. Rapid composition is not necessarily shallow, any more than careful and labored authorship is ipso facto thorough. Both qualities are more the result of habit than of the presence or lack of opportunity. It is the trained intellect, fitted to approach every subject in an orderly and keenly analytic way,