The same observation applies to books.  An author who waits upon the times, and utters only what he thinks the world will like to hear, who sails with the stream, admiring everything which it is “correct taste” to admire, despising everything which has not yet received that Hall-mark, sneering at the thoughts of a great thinker not yet accepted as such, and slavishly repeating the small phrases of a thinker who has gained renown, flippant and contemptuous towards opinions which he has not taken the trouble to understand, and never venturing to oppose even the errors of men in authority, such an author may indeed by dint of a certain dexterity in assorting the mere husks of opinion gain the applause of reviewers, who will call him a thinker, and of indolent men and women who will pronounce him “so clever ;” but triumphs of this kind are like oratorical triumphs after dinner.  Every autumn the earth is strewed with the dead leaves of such vernal successes.

I would not have the reader conclude that because I advocate plain-speaking even of unpopular views, I mean to imply that originality and sincerity are always in opposition to public opinion.  There are many points both of doctrine and feeling in which the world is not likely to be wrong.  But in all cases it is desirable that men should not pretend to believe opinions which they really reject, or express emotions they do not feel.  And this rule is universal.  Even truthful and modest men will sometimes violate the rule under the mistaken idea of being eloquent by means of the diction of eloquence.  This is a source of bad Literature.  There are certain views in Religion, Ethics, and Politics, which readily lend themselves to eloquence, because eloquent men have written largely on them, and the temptation to secure this facile effect often seduces men to advocate these views in preference to views they really see to be more rational.  That this eloquence at second-hand is but feeble in its effect, does not restrain others from repeating it.  Experience never seems to teach them that grand speech comes only from grand thoughts, passionate speech from passionate emotions.  The pomp and roll of words, the trick of phrase, the rhytlnn and the gesture of an orator, may all be imitated, but not his eloquence.  No man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but only by being so.  Trying leads to the vice of “fine writing”—­the plague-spot of Literature, not only unhealthy in itself, and vulgarising the grand language which should be reserved for great thoughts, but encouraging that tendency to select only those views upon which a spurious enthusiasm can most readily graft the representative abstractions and stirring suggestions which will move public applause.  The “fine writer” will always prefer the opinion which is striking to the opinion which is true.  He frames his sentences by the ear, and is only dissatisfied with them when their cadences are ill-distributed, or their diction