l remain
obscure. Many have had

"The visionary eye, the faculty to see
The thing that hath been as the thing which is,"

but either from native defect, or the mistaken bias of education, have
been frustrated in the attempt to give their visions beautiful or
intelligible shape. The art which could give them shape is doubtless
intimately dependent on clearness of eye and sincerity of purpose, but
it is also something over and above these, and comes from an organic
aptitude not less special, when possessed with fulness, than the
aptitude for music or drawing. Any instructed person can write, as any
one can learn to draw; but to write well, to express ideas with
felicity and force, is not an accomplishment but a talent. The power of
seizing unapparent relations of things is not always conjoined with the
power of selecting the fittest verbal symbols by which they can be made
apparent to others: the one is the power of the thinker, the other the
power of the writer.

"Style," says De Quincey, "has two separate functions---first, to
brighten the INTELLIGIBILITY of a subject which is obscure to the
understanding; secondly, to regenerate the normal POWER and
impressiveness of a subject which has become dormant to the
sensibilities. . . . . Decaying lineaments are to be retraced and faded
colouring to be refreshed." To effect these purposes we require a rich
verbal memory from which to select the symbols best fitted to call up
images in the reader's mind, and we also require the delicate selective
instinct to guide us in the choice and arrangement of those symbols, so
that the rhythm and cadence may agreeably attune the mind, rendering it
receptive to the impressions meant to be communicated. A copious verbal
memory, like a copious memory of facts, is only one source of power,
and without the high controlling faculty of the artist may lead to
diffusive indecision. Just as one man, gilted with keen insight, will
from a small stock of facts extricate unapparent relations to which
others, rich in knowledge, have been blind; so will a writer gifted
with a fine instinct select from a narrow range of phrases symbols of
beauty and of power utterly beyond the reach of commonplace minds. It
is often considered, both by writers and readers, that fine language
makes fine writers; yet no one supposes that fine colours make a fine
painter. The COPIA VERBORUM is often a weakness and a snare. As Arthur
Helps says, men use several epithets