110 SUGGESTIVENESS 



of the eighteenth, probably because this term has 

 been recently added to our psychology. 



As a rule it may be said that the more a writer 

 condenses, the more suggestive his work will be. 

 There is a sort of mechanical equivalent between 

 the force expended in compacting a sentence and the 

 force or stimulus it imparts again to the reader's 

 mind. A diffuse writer is rarely or never a sug 

 gestive one. Poetry is, or should be, more sugges 

 tive than prose, because it is the result of a more 

 compendious and sublimating process. The mind 

 of the poet is more tense, he uses language under 

 greater pressure of emotion than the prose writer, 

 whose medium of expression gives his mind more 

 play-room. The poet often succeeds in focusing 

 his meaning or emotion in a single epithet, and 

 he alone gives us the resounding, unforgettable 

 line. There are pregnant sentences in all the great 

 prose writers ; there are immortal lines only in the 

 poets. 



Whitman said the word he would himself use as 

 most truly descriptive of his "Leaves of Grass" 

 was the word suggestiveness. "I round and finish 

 little, if anything; and could not consistently with 

 my scheme. The reader will always have his or her 

 part to do, just as much as I have had mine. I seek 

 less to state or display my theme or thought, and 

 more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of 

 the theme or thought there to pursue your own 



