His Chapters Are Like English Parks,
Or Say Rather Like A Western Forest, Where The Larger Growth
Keeps Down The Underwood, And One May Ride On Horseback Through
The Openings.
All the distinguished writers of that period
possess a greater vigor and naturalness than the more
modern, - for it
Is allowed to slander our own time, - and when we
read a quotation from one of them in the midst of a modern
author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener ground, a
greater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a green bough
were laid across the page, and we are refreshed as by the sight
of fresh grass in midwinter or early spring. You have constantly
the warrant of life and experience in what you read. The little
that is said is eked out by implication of the much that was
done. The sentences are verdurous and blooming as evergreen and
flowers, because they are rooted in fact and experience, but our
false and florid sentence have only the tints of flowers without
their sap or roots. All men are really most attracted by the
beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in
imitation of this. They prefer to be misunderstood rather than
to come short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the
epistolary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta,
because of "the difficulty of understanding it; there was," he
said, "but one person at Jidda, who was capable of understanding
and explaining the Pasha's correspondence." A man's whole life is
taxed for the least thing well done.
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