e and more
fully until his untimely death. Wordsworth, though in most respects a
far profounder man, attained it only now and then, indeed only once
perfectly,--in his "Laodamia." Now, though it be undoubtedly true from
one point of view that what a man has to say is of more importance than
how he says it, and that modern criticism especially is more apt to be
guided by its moral and even political sympathies than by aesthetic
principles, it remains as true as ever that only those things have been
said finally which have been said perfectly, and that this finished
utterance is peculiarly the office of poetry, or of what, for want of
some word as comprehensive as the German _Dichtung_, we are forced to
call imaginative literature. Indeed, it may be said that, in whatever
kind of writing, it is style alone that is able to hold the attention of
the world long. Let a man be never so rich in thought, if he is clumsy
in the expression of it, his sinking, like that of an old Spanish
treasureship, will be hastened by the very weight of his bullion, and
perhaps, after the lapse of a century, some lucky diver fishes up his
ingots and makes a fortune out of him.

That Mr. Howells gave unequivocal indications of possessing this fine
quality interested us in his modest preludings. Marked, as they no doubt
were, by some uncertainty of aim and indefiniteness of thought, that
"stinting," as Chaucer calls it, of the nightingale "ere he beginneth
sing," there was nothing in them of the presumption and extravagance
which young authors are so apt to mistake for originality and vigor.
Sentiment predominated over reflection, as was fitting in youth; but
there was a refinement, an instinctive reserve of phrase, and a felicity
of epithet, only too rare in modern, and especially in American writing.
He was evidently a man more eager to make something good than to make a
sensation,--one of those authors more rare than ever in our day of
hand-to-mouth cleverness, who has a conscious ideal of excellence, and,
as we hope, the patience that will at length reach it. We made occasion
to find out something about him, and what we learned served to increase
our interest. This delicacy, it appeared, was a product of the
rough-and-ready West, this finish the natural gift of a young man with
no advantage of college-training, who, passing from the compositor's
desk to the editorship of a local newspaper, had been his own faculty of
the humanities. But there