“In the edifices of man there should be found reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue—­which gives veining to the leaf and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organisation but of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky; for these and other glories more than these refuse not to connect themselves in his thoughts with the work of his own hand; the grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some Cyclopoan waste of mural stone; the pinnacles of the rocky promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into fantastic semblances of fortress towns; and even the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a melancholy mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from the images of nameless tumuli on white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy clay into which chambered cities melt in their mortality.” [Ruskin].

I shall notice but two points in this singularly beautiful passage.  The one is the exquisite instinct of Sequence in several of the phrases, not only as to harmony, but as to the evolution of the meaning, especially in “builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky.”  The other is the injurious effect of three words in the sentence, “for these and other glories more than these refuse not to connect themselves in his thoughts.”  Strike out the words printed in italics, and you not only improve the harmony, but free the sentence from a disturbing use of what Ruskin has named the “pathetic fallacy.”  There are times in which Nature may be assumed as in sympathy with our moods; and at such times the pathetic fallacy is a source of subtle effect.  But in the passage just quoted the introduction seems to me a mistake:  the simplicity of the thought is disturbed by this hint of an active participation of Nature in man’s feelings; it is preserved in its integrity by the omission of that hint.

These illustrations will suffice to show how the law we are considering will command and forbid the use of concrete expressions and vivid imagery according to the purpose of the writer.  A fine taste guided by Sincerity will determine that use.  Nothing more than a general rule can be laid down.  Eloquence, as I said before, cannot spring from the simple desire to be eloquent; the desire usually leads to grandiloquence.  But Sincerity will save us.  We have but to remember Montesquieu’s advice:  “Il faut prendre garde aux grandes phrases dans les humbles sujets; elles produisent l’effet d’une masque a barbe blanche sur la joue d’un enfant.”

Here another warning may be placed.  In our anxiety lest we err on the side of grandiloquence we may perhaps fall into the opposite error of tameness.  Sincerity will save us here also.  Let us but express the thought and feeling actually in our minds, then our very grandiloquence (if that is our weakness) will have a certain movement and vivacity not without effect, and our tameness (if we are tame) will have a gentleness not without its charm.