laying down, and this is literature; not _things_, not the
verbal symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_; but thoughts
expressed in language. Call to mind, Gentlemen, the meaning of the Greek
word which expresses this special prerogative of man over the feeble
intelligence of the inferior animals. It is called Logos: what does Logos
mean? it stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to
say which it means more properly. It means both at once: why? because
really they cannot be divided,--because they are in a true sense one. When
we can separate light and illumination, life and motion, the convex and
the concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread
speech under foot, and to hope to do without it--then will it be
conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect should renounce its
own double, its instrument of expression, and the channel of its
speculations and emotions.

Critics should consider this view of the subject before they lay down such
canons of taste as the writer whose pages I have quoted. Such men as he is
consider fine writing to be an _addition from without_ to the matter
treated of,--a sort of ornament superinduced, or a luxury indulged in, by
those who have time and inclination for such vanities. They speak as if
_one_ man could do the thought, and _another_ the style. We read in
Persian travels of the way in which young gentlemen go to work in the
East, when they would engage in correspondence with those who inspire them
with hope or fear. They cannot write one sentence themselves; so they
betake themselves to the professional letter-writer. They confide to him
the object they have in view. They have a point to gain from a superior, a
favour to ask, an evil to deprecate; they have to approach a man in power,
or to make court to some beautiful lady. The professional man manufactures
words for them, as they are wanted, as a stationer sells them paper, or a
schoolmaster might cut their pens. Thought and word are, in their
conception, two things, and thus there is a division of labour. The man of
thought comes to the man of words; and the man of words, duly instructed
in the thought, dips the pen of desire into the ink of devotedness, and
proceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. Then the nightingale of
affection is heard to warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze
of anxiety plays around the brow of expectation. This is what the Ea