of human affairs, and I will not even insist on
the doctrine of that Pythagorean toper, who was of opinion that over
a bottle speaking spoiled conversation. But I will not allow that a
professor of the fine arts has occasion to embody the idea of his scene
in language, in order to impress upon the reader its reality and its
effect. On the contrary, I will be judged by most of your readers,
Peter, should these tales ever become public, whether you have not
given us a page of talk for every single idea which two words might have
communicated, while the posture, and manner, and incident, accurately
drawn, and brougth out by appropriate colouring, would have preserved
all that was worthy of preservation, and saved these everlasting 'said
he's' and 'said she's,' with which it has been your pleasure to encumber
your pages."

I replied, "That he confounded the operations of the pencil and the pen;
that the serene and silent art, as painting has been called by one of
our first living poets, necessarily appealed to the eye, because it had
not the organs for addressing the ear; whereas poetry, or that species
of composition which approached to it, lay under the necessity of doing
absolutely the reverse, and addressed itself to the ear, for the purpose
of exciting that interest which it could not attain through the medium
of the eye."

Dick was not a whit staggered by my argument, which he contended was
founded on misrepresentation. "Description," he said, "was to the author
of a romance exactly what drawing and tinting were to a painter: words
were his colours, and, if properly employed, they could not fail to
place the scene which he wished to conjure up as effectually before the
mind's eye as the tablet or canvas presents it to the bodily organ.
The same rules," he contended, "applied to both, and an exuberance
of dialogue, in the former case, was a verbose and laborious mode
of composition which went to confound the proper art of fictitious
narrative with that of the drama, a widely different species of
composition, of which dialogue was the very essence, because all,
excepting the language to be made use of, was presented to the eye by
the dresses, and persons, and actions of the performers upon the stage.
But as nothing," said Dick, "can be more dull than a long narrative
written upon the plan of a drama, so where you have approached most near
to that species of composition, by indulging in prolonged scenes of mere
conver