EDITOR.
CHAPTER V.
THE PRINCIPLE OF BEAUTY.
It is not enough that a man has clearness of Vision, and reliance on
Sincerity, he must also have the art of Expression, or he will remain
obscure. Many have had
"The visionary eye, the faculty to see
The thing that hath been as the thing which is,"
but either from native defect, or the mistaken bias of education, have
been frustrated in the attempt to give their visions beautiful or
intelligible shape. The art which could give them shape is doubtless
intimately dependent on clearness of eye and sincerity of purpose, but
it is also something over and above these, and comes from an organic
aptitude not less special, when possessed with fulness, than the
aptitude for music or drawing. Any instructed person can write, as any
one can learn to draw; but to write well, to express ideas with
felicity and force, is not an accomplishment but a talent. The power of
seizing unapparent relations of things is not always conjoined with the
power of selecting the fittest verbal symbols by which they can be made
apparent to others: the one is the power of the thinker, the other the
power of the writer.
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