the magic of their various combinations. We travel so for
miles and hours, and then we come to a scene which also has these
various circumstances and adjuncts, but which combines them best,
which makes the best whole of them, which shows them in their best
proportion at a single glance before the eye. Then we say, 'This is
the place to paint the river; this is the picturesque point!' Or, if
not artists or critics of art, we feel without analysis or examination
that somehow this bend or sweep of the river, shall, in future, _be
the river to us_: that it is the image of it which we will retain in
our mind's eye, by which we will remember it, which we will call up
when we want to describe or think of it. Some fine countries, some
beautiful rivers, have not this picturesque quality: they give us
elements of beauty, but they do not combine them together; we go on
for a time delighted, but _after_ a time somehow we get wearied; we
feel that we are taking in nothing and learning nothing; we get no
collected image before our mind; we see the accidents and
circumstances of that sort of scenery, but the summary scene we do not
see; we find _disjecta membra_, but no form; various and many and
faulty approximations are displayed in succession; but the absolute
perfection in that country or river's scenery--its _type_--is
withheld: We go away from such places in part delighted, but in part
baffled; we have been puzzled by pretty things; we have beheld a
hundred different inconsistent specimens of the same sort of beauty;
but the rememberable idea, the full development, the characteristic
individuality of it, we have not seen.

We find the same sort of quality in all parts of painting. We see a
portrait of a person we know, and we say, 'It is like--yes, like, of
course, but it is not _the man_;' we feel it could not be any one
else, but still, somehow it fails to bring home to us the individual
as we know him to be. _He_ is not there. An accumulation of features
like his are painted, but his essence is not painted; an
approximation more or less excellent is given, but the characteristic
expression, the _typical_ form, of the man is withheld.

Literature--the painting of words--has the same quality but wants the
analogous word. The word '_literatesque_,' would mean, if we possessed
it, that perfect combination in the _subject-matter_ of literature,
which suits the _art_ of literature. We often meet people, and say of
them, sometime