212 LITERARY VALUES 



" the prophetic soiJ 

 Of the -wide world dreaming on things to come," 



a very suggestive, but not a clearly intelligible 



Truth at the centre, straightly put, excites the 

 mind in one way, and truth at the surface, or at the 

 periphery of the circle, indirectly put, excites it 

 in another way and for other reasons ; just as a 

 light in a dark place, which illuminates, appeals to 

 the eye in a different way from the light of day fall- 

 ing through vapors or colored glass, wherein objects 

 become softened and illusory. 



A common word may be so used as to have an 

 unexpected richness of meaning, as when Coleridge 

 speaks of those books that " find " us ; or Shake- 

 speare of the " marriage of true minds," or Whitman 

 of the autumn apple hanging "indolent-ripe" on 

 the tree. Probably that language is the most sug- 

 gestive that is the most concrete, that is drawn most 

 largely from the experience of life, that savors of 

 real things. The Saxon English of Walton or Bar- 

 row is more suggestive than the latinized English of 

 Johnson or Gibbon. 



Indeed, the quality I am speaking of is quite 

 exceptional in the eighteenth-century writers. It is 

 much more abundant in the writei's of the seven- 

 teenth century. It goes much more with the ver- 

 nacular style, the homely style, than with the pol- 

 ished academic style. 



With the stream of English literature of the 

 nineteenth century has mingled a current of German 



