is neither diffuse, nor unmeaning,
nor confused, and consequently not tedious. In such a case, even
though the author is at bottom in error, the error is at any rate
clearly worked out and well thought over, so that it is at least
formally correct; and thus some value always attaches to the work. But
for the same reason a work that is objectively tedious is at all times
devoid of any value whatever.

The other kind of tediousness is only relative: a reader may find a
work dull because he has no interest in the question treated of in it,
and this means that his intellect is restricted. The best work may,
therefore, be tedious subjectively, tedious, I mean, to this or
that particular person; just as, contrarity, the worst work may be
subjectively engrossing to this or that particular person who has an
interest in the question treated of, or in the writer of the book.

It would generally serve writers in good stead if they would see that,
whilst a man should, if possible, think like a great genius, he should
talk the same language as everyone else. Authors should use common
words to say uncommon things. But they do just the opposite. We find
them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, and to clothe
their very ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary phrases, the
most far-fetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-way expressions. Their
sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts. They take so much
pleasure in bombast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated,
affected, hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their prototype is
Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently told to say
what he had to say _like a man of this world._[1]

[Footnote 1: _King Henry IV_., Part II. Act v. Sc. 3.]

There is no expression in any other language exactly answering to the
French _stile empese_; but the thing itself exists all the more often.
When associated with affectation, it is in literature what assumption
of dignity, grand airs and primeness are in society; and equally
intolerable. Dullness of mind is fond of donning this dress; just as
an ordinary life it is stupid people who like being demure and formal.

An author who writes in the prim style resembles a man who dresses
himself up in order to avoid being confounded or put on the same level
with a mob--a risk never run by the _gentleman_, even in his worst
clothes. The plebeian may be known by a certain showiness of attire
and a wish to have everything spick and