ar to the
nursery: this one a pillar, that a pediment, a third a window or a vase.
It is with blocks of just such arbitrary size and figure that the
literary architect is condemned to design the palace of his art. Nor is
this all; for since these blocks, or words, are the acknowledged
currency of our daily affairs, there are here possible none of those
suppressions by which other arts obtain relief, continuity and vigour;
no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, no inscrutable shadow, as in
painting; no blank wall, as in architecture; but every word, phrase,
sentence, and paragraph must move in a logical progression, and convey a
definite conventional import.

Now, the first merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer, or
the talk of a brilliant conversationalist, is the apt choice and
contrast of the words employed. It is, indeed, a strange art to take
these blocks, rudely conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar,
and by tact of application touch them to the finest meanings and
distinctions, restore to them their primal energy, wittily shift them to
another issue, or make of them a drum to rouse the passions. But though
this form of merit is without doubt the most sensible and seizing, it is
far from being equally present in all writers. The effect of words in
Shakespeare, their singular justice, significance, and poetic charm, is
different, indeed, from the effect of words in Addison or Fielding. Or,
to take an example nearer home, the words in Carlyle seem electrified
into an energy of lineament, like the faces of men furiously moved;
whilst the words in Macaulay, apt enough to convey his meaning,
harmonious enough in sound, yet glide from the memory like
undistinguished elements in a general effect. But the first class of
writers have no monopoly of literary merit. There is a sense in which
Addison is superior to Carlyle; a sense in which Cicero is better than
Tacitus, in which Voltaire excels Montaigne: it certainly lies not in
the choice of words; it lies not in the interest or value of the matter;
it lies not in force of intellect, of poetry, or of humour. The three
first are but infants to the three second; and yet each, in a particular
point of literary art, excels his superior in the whole. What is that
point?

2. _The Web_.--Literature, although it stands apart by reason of the
great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is
yet an art like other arts. Of these we m