The
art of the writer consists in rejecting all redundancies that do not
conduce to clearness. The shortest sentences are not necessarily the
clearest. Concision gives energy, but it also adds restraint. The
labour of expanding a terse sentence to its full meaning is often
greater than the labour of picking out the meaning from a diffuse and
loitering passage. Tacitus is more tiresome than Cicero.
There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in
effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification. An example may be
seen in the passage which has been a favourite illustration from the
days of Longinus to our own. "God said: Let there be light! and there
was light." This is a conception of power so calm and simple that it
needs only to be presented in the fewest and the plainest words, and
would be confused or weakened by any suggestion of accessories. Let us
amplify the expression in the redundant style of miscalled eloquent
writers: "God, in the magnificent fulness of creative energy,
exclaimed: Let there be light! and lo! the agitating fiat immediately
went forth, and thus in one indivisible moment the whole universe was
illumlned.
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