rrecting, perfecting? Are not the first attempts of Michael
Angelo and Raffaelle extant, in the case of some of their most celebrated
compositions? Will any one say that the Apollo Belvidere is not a
conception patiently elaborated into its proper perfection? These
departments of taste are, according to the received notions of the world,
the very province of genius, and yet we call them _arts_; they are the
"Fine Arts." Why may not that be true of literary composition which is
true of painting, sculpture, architecture, and music? Why may not language
be wrought as well as the clay of the modeller? why may not words be
worked up as well as colours? why should not skill in diction be simply
subservient and instrumental to the great prototypal ideas which are the
contemplation of a Plato or a Virgil? Our greatest poet tells us,

"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

Now, is it wonderful that that pen of his should sometimes be at fault for
a while,--that it should pause, write, erase, re-write, amend, complete,
before he satisfies himself that his language has done justice to the
conceptions which his mind's eye contemplated?

In this point of view, doubtless, many or most writers are elaborate; and
those certainly not the least whose style is furthest removed from
ornament, being simple and natural, or vehement, or severely business-like
and practical. Who so energetic and manly as Demosthenes? Yet he is said
to have transcribed Thucydides many times over in the formation of his
style. Who so gracefully natural as Herodotus? yet his very dialect is not
his own, but chosen for the sake of the perfection of his narrative. Who
exhibits such happy negligence as our own Addison? yet artistic
fastidiousness was so notorious in his instance that the report has got
abroad, truly or not, that he was too late in his issue of an important
state-paper, from his habit of revision and recomposition. Such great
authors were working by a model which was before the eyes of their
intellect, and they were labouring to say what they had to say, in such a
way as would most exactly and suitably express it. It is not wonderful
that other authors, whose style is not simple, should be instances of a
similar literary diligence. V