But shall we now look more carefully into these twin questions of perspicuity and accuracy:  for I think pursuing them, we may almost reach the philosophic kernel of good writing.  I quoted Newman playfully a moment ago.  I am going to quote him in strong earnest.  And here let me say that of all the books written in these hundred years there is perhaps none you can more profitably thumb and ponder than that volume of his in which, under the title of “The Idea of a University,” he collected nine discourses addressed to the Roman Catholics of Dublin with some lectures delivered to the Catholic University there.  It is fragmentary, because its themes were occasional.  It has missed to be appraised at its true worth, partly no doubt by reason of the colour it derives from a religion still unpopular in England.  But in fact it may be read without offence by the strictest Protestant; and the book is so wise—­so eminently wise—­as to deserve being bound by the young student of literature for a frontlet on his brow and a talisman on his writing wrist.

Now you will find much pretty swordsmanship in its pages, but nothing more trenchant than the passage in which Newman assails and puts to rout the Persian host of infidels—­I regret to say, for the most part Men of Science—­who would persuade us that good writing, that style, is something extrinsic to the subject, a kind of ornamentation laid on to tickle the taste, a study for the dilettante, but beneath the notice of their stern and masculine minds.

Such a view, as he justly points out, belongs rather to the Oriental mind than to our civilisation:  it reminds him of the way young gentlemen go to work in the East when they would engage in correspondence with the object of their affection.  The enamoured one cannot write a sentence himself:  he is the specialist in passion (for the moment); but thought and words are two things to him, and for words he must go to another specialist, the professional letter-writer.  Thus there is a division of labour.

The man of words, duly instructed, dips the pen of desire in the ink of devotedness and proceeds to spread it over the page of desolation.  Then the nightingale of affection is heard to warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze of anxiety plays around the brow of expectation.  That is what the Easterns are said to consider fine writing; and it seems pretty much the idea of the school of critics to which I have been referring.

Now hear this fine passage:—­

Thought and speech are inseparable from each other.  Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.  That is what I have been laying down, and this is literature; not things, but the verbal symbols of things; not on the other hand mere words; but thoughts expressed in language.  Call to mind, gentlemen, the meaning of the Greek word which expresses this special prerogative of man over the feeble