These illustrations will suffice to show how the law we are considering
will command and forbid the use of concrete expressions and vivid
imagery according to the purpose of the writer. A fine taste guided by
Sincerity will determine that use. Nothing more than a general rule can
be laid down. Eloquence, as I said before, cannot spring from the
simple desire to be eloquent; the desire usually leads to
grandiloquence. But Sincerity will save us. We have but to remember
Montesquieu's advice: "Il faut prendre garde aux grandes phrases dans
les humbles sujets; elles produisent l'effet d'une masque a barbe
blanche sur la joue d'un enfant."
Here another warning may be placed. In our anxiety lest we err on the
side of grandiloquence we may perhaps fall into the opposite error of
tameness. Sincerity will save us here also. Let us but express the
thought and feeling actually in our minds, then our very grandiloquence
(if that is our weakness) will have a certain movement and vivacity not
without effect, and our tameness (if we are tame) will have a
gentleness not without its charm.
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