uage come only with much reading and writing; and to demand
everything at the very beginning is little less than sheer madness.

Moreover there never comes a time when the construction of a
paragraph, the shaping of a phrase, or the choice of a word becomes an
end in itself. Paragraphs, sentences, and words are well chosen when
they serve best the whole composition. He who becomes enamored of one
form of paragraph, who always uses periodic sentences, who chooses
only common words, has not yet recognized that the beauty of a phrase
or a word is determined by its fitness, and that it is most beautiful
because it exactly suits the place it fills. The graceful sweep of a
line by Praxiteles or the glorious radiancy of a color by Angelico is
most beautiful in the place it took from the master's hand. So
Lowell's wealth of figurative language and Stevenson's unerring choice
of delicate words are most beautiful, not when torn from their
original setting to serve as examples in rhetorics, but when
fulfilling their part in a well-planned whole. And it is only as the
beauties of literature are born of the thought that they ever succeed.
No one can say to himself, "I will now make a good simile," and
straightway fulfill his promise. If, however, the thought of a writer
takes fire, and instead of the cold, unimpassioned phraseology of the
logician, glowing images crowd up, and phrases tipped with fire, then
figurative language best suits the thought,--indeed, it is the
thought. But imagery upon compulsion,--never. So that at no time
should one attempt to mould fine phrases for the sake of the phrases
themselves, but he should spare no pains with them when they spring
from the whole, when they harmonize with the whole, and when they give
to the whole added beauty and strength.

It is quite unnecessary at this day to urge the study of literature.
It is in the course of study for every secondary school. Yet a word
may be said of the value of this study to the practice of composition.
There are two classes of artists: geniuses and men of talent. Of
geniuses in literature, one can count the names on his fingers; most
authors are simply men of talent. Talent learns to do by doing, and by
observing how others have done. When Brunelleschi left Rome for
Florence, he had closely observed and had drawn every arch of the
stupendous architecture in that ancient city; and so he was adjudged
by his fellow citizens to be the only man competent to