Nay, even good
writers sometimes sacrifice the large effect of a diffusive light to
the small effect of a brilliant point. This is a defect of taste
frequently noticeable in two very good writers, De Quincey and Ruskin,
whose command of expression is so varied that it tempts them into
FIORITURA as flexibility of voice tempts singers to sin against
simplicity. At the close of an eloquent passage De Quincey writes :--
"Gravitation that works without holiday for ever and searches every
corner of the universe, what intellect can follow it to its fountains?
And yet, shyer than gravitation, less to be counted on than the
fluxions of sun-dials, stealthier than the growth of a forest, are the
footsteps of Christianity amongst the political workings of man."
The association of holidays and shyness with an idea so abstract as
that of gravitation, the use of the learned word fluxions to express
the movements of the shadows on a dial, and the discordant suggestion
of stealthiness applied to vegetable growth and Christianity, are so
many offences against simplicity.
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