any particular idea of what the author really means. They fancy it is
all as it should be, and fail to discover that he is writing simply
for writing's sake.

[Footnote 1: Select examples of the art of writing in this style are
to be found almost _passim_ in the _Jahrbücher_ published at Halle,
afterwards called the _Deutschen Jahrbücher_.]

On the other hand, a good author, fertile in ideas, soon wins his
reader's confidence that, when he writes, he has really and truly
_something to say_; and this gives the intelligent reader patience to
follow him with attention. Such an author, just because he really has
something to say, will never fail to express himself in the simplest
and most straightforward manner; because his object is to awake the
very same thought in the reader that he has in himself, and no other.
So he will be able to affirm with Boileau that his thoughts are
everywhere open to the light of the day, and that his verse always
says something, whether it says it well or ill:

_Ma pensée au grand jour partout s'offre et s'expose,
Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque chose_:

while of the writers previously described it may be asserted, in the
words of the same poet, that they talk much and never say anything at
all--_quiparlant beaucoup ne disent jamais rien_.

Another characteristic of such writers is that they always avoid a
positive assertion wherever they can possibly do so, in order to leave
a loophole for escape in case of need. Hence they never fail to choose
the more _abstract_ way of expressing themselves; whereas intelligent