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Prose

Notes The first is compilation; and consists in collecting and stating all that is already known of any
question in the best possible manner, for the benefit of the uninformed reader. An author of this
class is a very learned amanuensis of other people’s thoughts. The second sort proceeds on an
entirely different principle: instead of bringing down the account of knowledge to the point at
which it has already arrived, it professes to start from that point on the strength of the writer’s
individual reflections; and supposing the reader in possession of what is already known, supplies
deficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the beaten road in search of new tracts of observation
or sources of feeling. It is in vain to object to this last style that it is disjointed, disproportioned,
and irregular. It is merely a set of additions and corrections to other men’s works, or to the
common stock of human knowledge, printed separately. You might as well expect a continued
chain of reasoning in the notes to a book. It skips all the trite, intermediate, level common-places
of the subject, and only stops at the difficult passages of the human mind, or touches on some
striking point that has been overlooked in previous editions. A view of a subject, to be connected
and regular, cannot be all new. A writer will always be liable to be charged either with paradox or
common-place, either with dulness or affectation. But we have no right to demand from any one
more than he pretends to. There is indeed a medium in all things, but to unite opposite excellencies
is a task ordinarily too hard for mortality. He who succeeds in what he aims at, or who takes the
lead in any one mode or path of excellence, may think himself very well off. It would not be fair
to complain of the style of an Encyclopedia as dull, as wanting volatile salt; nor of the style of an
Essay because it is too light and sparkling, because it is not a caput mortuum. So it is rather an odd
objection to a work that it is made up entirely of ‘brilliant passages’—at least it is a fault that can
be found with few works, and the book might be pardoned for its singularity. The censure might
indeed seem like adroit flattery, if it were not passed on an author whom any objection is sufficient
to render unpopular and ridiculous. I grant it is best to unite solidity with show, general information
with particular ingenuity. This is the pattern of a perfect style; but I myself do not pretend to be
a perfect writer. In fine, we do not banish light French wines from our tables, or refuse to taste
sparkling Champagne when we can get it because it has not the body of Old Port. Besides, I do not
know that dulness is strength, or that an observation is slight because it is striking. Mediocrity,
insipidity, want of character is the great fault.
Mediocribus esse poetis Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnae.Neither is this privilege
allowed to prose-writers in our time any more than to poets formerly. It is not then acuteness of
organs or extent of capacity that constitutes rare genius or produces the most exquisite models of
art, but an intense sympathy with some one beauty or distinguishing characteristic in nature.
Irritability alone, or the interest taken in certain things, may supply the place of genius in weak
and otherwise ordinary minds. As there are certain instruments fitted to perform certain kinds of
labour, there are certain minds so framed as to produce certain chef-d’oeuvres in art and literature,
which is surely the best use they can be put to. If a man had all sorts of instruments in his shop and
wanted one, he would rather have that one than be supplied with a double set of all the others. If
he had them twice over, he could only do what he can do as it is, whereas without that one he
perhaps cannot finish any one work he has in hand. So if a man can do one thing better than
anybody else, the value of this one thing is what he must stand or fall by, and his being able to do
a hundred other things merely as well as anybody else would not alter the sentence or add to his
respectability; on the contrary, his being able to do so many other things well would probably
interfere with and encumber him in the execution of the only thing that others cannot do as well
as he, and so far be a drawback and a disadvantage. More people, in fact, fail from a multiplicity
of talents and pretensions than from an absolute poverty of resources. I have given instances of
this elsewhere. Perhaps Shakespear’s tragedies would in some respects have been better if he had
never written comedies at all; and in that case his comedies might well have been spared, though
they must have cost us some regret. Racine, it is said, might have rivalled Moliere in comedy; but
he gave up the cultivation of his comic talents to devote himself wholly to the tragic Muse. If, as

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