obvious that the details here assembled are mostly foreign to
my purpose, which has nothing whatever to do with fishermen, storms,
boats, sea-weeds, or purple crags; and by calling up images of these I
only divert the attention from my thought. Whereas, if it had been my
purpose to picture the scene itself, or the man's delight in it, then
the enumeration of details would give colour and distinctness to the
picture.

The art of a great writer is seen in the perfect fitness of his
expressions. He knows how to blend vividness with vagueness, knows
where images are needed, and where by their vivacity they would be
obstacles to the rapid appreciation of his thought. The value of
concrete illustration artfully used may be seen illustrated in a
passage from Macaulay's invective against Frederick the Great: "On his
head is all the blood which was shod in a war which raged during many
years and in every quarter of the globe, the blood of the column at
Fentonoy, the blood of the mountaineers who were slaughtered at
Culloden. The evils produced by his wickedness were felt in lands where
the name of Prussia was unknown; and in order that he might rob a
neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast
of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of
North America." Disregarding the justice or injustice of the thought,
note the singular force and beauty of this passage, delightful alike to
ear and mind; and observe how its very elaborateness has the effect of
the finest simplicity, because the successive pictures are constituents
of the general thought, and by their vividness render the conclusion
more impressive. Let us suppose him to have wrltten with the vague
generality of expression much patronised by dignified historians, and
told us that "Frederick was the cause of great European conflicts
extending over long periods; and in consequence of his political
aggression hideous crimes were perpetrated in the most distant parts of
the globe." This absence of concrete images would not have been
simplicity, inasmuch as the labour of converting the general
expressions into definite meanings would thus have been thrown upon the
reader.

Pictorial illustration has its dangers, as we daily see in the clumsy
imitators of Macaulay, who have not the fine instinct of style, but
obey the vulgar instinct of display, and imagine they can produce a
brilliant effect by the use of strong lights, whereas th