206 LITERARY TALUES 



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 

 Matthew Arnold at his best, while it is rarely pre- 

 sent in the pages of Herbert Spencer. Spencer has 

 great clearness and compass, but there is nothing 

 resonant in his style, — nothing that stimulates the 

 imagination. 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 iised as 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. 



In the world of experience and observation the 

 suggestiveness of things is enhanced by veils, con- 

 cealments, half lights, flowing lines. The twilight 

 is more suggestive than the glare of noonday, a 



