sympathetic commentator :--

Possessed of an absolute belief that there exists but one way of
expressing one thing, one word to call it by, one adjective to
qualify, one verb to animate it, he gave himself to superhuman
labour for the discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that
verb, that epithet. In this way, he believed in some mysterious
harmony of expression, and when a true word seemed to him to
lack euphony still went on seeking another, with invincible
patience, certain that he had not yet got hold of the unique
word.... A thousand preoccupations would beset him at the
same moment, always with this desperate certitude fixed in his
spirit: Among all the expressions in the world, all forms and
turns of expression, there is but one--one form, one mode--to
express what I want to say.

The one word for the one thing, the one thought, amid the multitude
of words, terms, that might just do: the problem of style was there!-
-the unique word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, essay, or song,
absolutely proper to the single mental presentation or vision within.

[30] In that perfect justice, over and above the many contingent and
removable beauties with which beautiful style may charm us, but which
it can exist without, independent of them yet dexterously availing
itself of them, omnipresent in good work, in function at every point,
from single epithets to the rhythm of a whole book, lay the specific,
indispensable, very intellectual, beauty of literature, the
possibility of which constitutes it a fine art.

One seems to detect the influence of a philosophic idea there, the