LUCID LITEKATUEE 



"VTOTHING can make up in a writer for the 

 -^^ want of lucidity. It is one of the cardinal 

 literary virtues. If the page is not clear, if we see 

 through it as through a glass darkly, if there is the 

 least blur or opacity, the work to that extent is con- 

 demned. It is a false notion that some thoughts or 

 Meas are necessarily obscure, or complex, or involved. 

 Ideas are what we make them. If we think ob- 

 scurely, our ideas are obscure ; if one's mental activity 

 is complex, his ideas are complex. Always is the 

 mind of the writer the medium through which we 

 see his matter. Such a poet as George Meredith 

 thinks obscurely. There is a large blind spot in his 

 mind, so that at times an almost total eclipse passes 

 over his page. Strain one's vision as one may, one 

 cannot make out just what he is trying to say. Then 

 there are lucid intervals — strong, telling lines ; then 

 the shadow falls again and the reader is groping in 

 the dark. The difficulty is never innate in his sub- 

 ject, but is in the poet's use of language, as if at 

 times he caught at words blindly and used them with- 

 out reference to their accepted meanings, as when 

 he says of the skylark, " He drinks his hurried 



