the best characteristic of literary morality. "Oh, for the style of honest men!" sighs Sainte-Beuve, sick of such unreserved disclosures; "of men who have revered everything worthy of respect, whose innate feelings have ever been governed by the principles of good taste. Oh, for the polished, pure, and moderate writers!"
There is a pitiless French maxim, less popular with English and Americans than with our Gallic neighbors,—"Le secret d'ennuyer est de tout dire." Mr. Pater indeed expresses the same thought in ampler English fashion (which but emphasizes the superiority of the French) when he says, "For in truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage, from the last finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of the finished work to be, lying somewhere, according to Michelangelo's fancy, in the rough-hewn block of stone." That the literary artist tests his skill by a masterly omission of all that is better left unsaid is a truth widely admitted and scantily utilized. Authors who have not taken the trouble de faire leur toilette admit
