102 SUGGESTIVENESS 



most suggestive of our poets ; he elaborates the least 

 and gives us in profusion the buds and germs of 

 poetry. A musical composer once said to me that 

 Whitman stimulated him more than Tennyson, be 

 cause he left more for him to do, he abounded in 

 hints and possibilities that the musician's mind 

 eagerly seized. 



This quality is not related to ambiguity of phrase 

 or to cryptic language or to vagueness and obscurity. 

 It goes, or may go, with perfect lucidity, as in Mat 

 thew Arnold at his best, while it is rarely present in 

 the pages of Herbert Spencer. Spencer has great 

 clearness and compass, but there is nothing resonant 

 in his style, nothing that stimulates the imagina 

 tion. He is a great workman, but the metal he works 

 in is not of the kind called precious. 



The late roundabout and enigmatical style of 

 Henry James is far less fruitful in his readers' minds 

 than his earlier and more direct one, or than the 

 limpid style of his compeer, Mr. Howells. The 

 indirect and elliptical method may undoubtedly be 

 so used a^ to stimulate the mind ; at the same time 

 there may be a kind of inconclusiveness and beating 

 around the bush that is barren and wearisome. Upon 

 the page of the great novelist there fall, more or less 

 distinct, all the colors of the spectrum of human 

 life; but Mr. James in his later works seems intent 

 only upon the invisible rays of the spectrum, and his 

 readers grope in the darkness accordingly. 



