Such an author will at one moment write in a dithyrambic vein, as
though he were tipsy; at another, nay, on the very next page, he will
be pompous, severe, profoundly learned and prolix, stumbling on in the
most cumbrous way and chopping up everything very small; like the late
Christian Wolf, only in a modern dress. Longest of all lasts the mask
of unintelligibility; but this is only in Germany, whither it was
introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and carried to its
highest pitch in Hegel--always with the best results.

And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand;
just as contrarily, nothing is more difficult than to express deep
things in such a way that every one must necessarily grasp them. All
the arts and tricks I have been mentioning are rendered superfluous if
the author really has any brains; for that allows him to show himself
as he is, and confirms to all time Horace's maxim that good sense is
the source and origin of good style:

_Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons_.

But those authors I have named are like certain workers in metal, who
try a hundred different compounds to take the place of gold--the only
metal which can never have any substitute. Rather than do that, there
is nothing against which a writer should be more upon his guard than
the manifest endeavor to exhibit more intellect than he really has;
because this makes the reader suspect that he possesses very little;
since it is always the case that if a man affects anything, whatever
it may be, it is just there that he is deficient.

That is why it is praise to an author to say that he is _naïve_; it
means that he need not shrink from showing himself as he is. Generally