e the mind, hates
confusion and overcrowding. All the elements in beauty, grandeur, pathos,
are simple--as simple as the lines in a Nile picture: the strong river,
the yellow desert, the palms, the pyramids; hardly more than a horizontal
line and a perpendicular line; only there is the sky, the atmosphere, the
color-those need genius.

We may test contemporary literature by its confortuity to the canon of
simplicity--that is, if it has not that, we may conclude that it lacks
one essential lasting quality. It may please;--it may be ingenious
--brilliant, even; it may be the fashion of the day, and a fashion that
will hold its power of pleasing for half a century, but it will be a
fashion. Mannerisms of course will not deceive us, nor extravagances,
eccentricities, affectations, nor the straining after effect by the use
of coined or far-fetched words and prodigality in adjectives. But, style?
Yes, there is such a thing as style, good and bad; and the style should
be the writer's own and characteristic of him, as his speech is. But the
moment I admire a style for its own sake, a style that attracts my
attention so constantly that I say, How good that is! I begin to be
suspicious. If it is too good, too pronouncedly good, I fear I shall not
like it so well on a second reading. If it comes to stand between me and
the thought, or the personality behind the thought, I grow more and more
suspicious. Is the book a window, through which I am to see life? Then I
cannot have the glass too clear. Is it to affect me like a strain of
music? Then I am still more disturbed by any affectations. Is it to
produce the effect of a picture? Then I know I want the simplest harmony
of color. And I have learned that the most effective word-painting, as it
is called, is the simplest. This is true if it is a question only of
present enjoyment. But we may be sure that any piece of literature which
attracts only by some trick of style, however it may blaze up for a day
and startle the world with its flash, lacks the element of endurance. We
do not need much experience to tell us the difference between a lamp and
a Roman candle. Even in our day we have seen many reputations flare up,
illuminate the sky, and then go out in utter darkness. When we take a
proper historical perspective, we see that it is the universal, the
simple, that lasts.

I am not sure whether simplicity is a matter of nature or of cultivation.
Barbarous nature likes display, exces