What is it that makes intellectual Veal?  What are the things about a composition which stamp it as such?  Well, it is a certain character in thought and style hard to define, but strongly felt by such as discern its presence at all.  It is strongly felt by professors reading the compositions of their students, especially the compositions of the cleverest students.  It is strongly felt by educated folk of middle age, in listening to the sermons of young pulpit orators, especially of such as think for themselves, of such as aim at a high standard of excellence, of such as have in them the makings of striking and eloquent preachers.  Dull and stupid fellows never deviate into the extravagance and absurdity which I specially understand by Veal.  They plod along in a humdrum manner; there is no poetry in their soul,—­none of those ambitious stirrings which lead the man who has in him the true spark of genius to try for grand things and incur severe and ignominious tumbles.  A heavy dray-horse, walking along the road, may possibly advance at a very lagging pace, or may even stand still; but whatever he may do, he is not likely to jump violently over the hedge, or to gallop off at twenty-five miles an hour.  It must be a thoroughbred who will go wrong in that grand fashion.  And there are intellectual absurdities and extravagances which hold out hopeful promise of noble doings yet:  the eagle, which will breast the hurricane yet, may meet various awkward tumbles before he learns the fashion in which to use those iron wings.  But the substantial goose, which probably escapes those tumbles in trying to fly, will never do anything very magnificent in the way of flying.  The man who in his early days writes in a very inflated and bombastic style will gradually sober down into good sense and accurate taste, still retaining something of liveliness and eloquence.  But expect little of the man who as a boy was always sensible, and never bombastic.  He will grow awfully dry.  He is sure to fall into the unpardonable sin of tiresomeness.  The rule has exceptions; but the earliest productions of a man of real genius are almost always crude, flippant, and affectedly smart, or else turgid and extravagant in a high degree.  Witness Mr. Disraeli; witness Sir E.B.  Lytton; witness even Macaulay.  The man who as mere boy writes something very sound and sensible will probably never become more than a dull, sensible, commonplace man.  Many people can say, as they bethink themselves of their old college companions, that those who wrote with good sense and good taste at twenty have mostly settled down into the dullest and baldest of prosers; while such as dealt in bombastic flourishes and absurd ambitiousness of style have learned, as time went on, to prune their early luxuriances, while still retaining something of raciness, interest, and ornament.