I have alluded to the tediousness which marks the works of these writers; and in this connection it is to be observed, generally, that tediousness is of two kinds; objective and subjective.  A work is objectively tedious when it contains the defect in question; that is to say, when its author has no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to communicate.  For if a man has any clear thought or knowledge in him, his aim will be to communicate it, and he will direct his energies to this end; so that the ideas he furnishes are everywhere clearly expressed.  The result is that he is neither diffuse, nor unmeaning, nor confused, and consequently not tedious.  In such a case, even though the author is at bottom in error, the error is at any rate clearly worked out and well thought over, so that it is at least formally correct; and thus some value always attaches to the work.  But for the same reason a work that is objectively tedious is at all times devoid of any value whatever.

The other kind of tediousness is only relative:  a reader may find a work dull because he has no interest in the question treated of in it, and this means that his intellect is restricted.  The best work may, therefore, be tedious subjectively, tedious, I mean, to this or that particular person; just as, contrarity, the worst work may be subjectively engrossing to this or that particular person who has an interest in the question treated of, or in the writer of the book.

It would generally serve writers in good stead if they would see that, whilst a man should, if possible, think like a great genius, he should talk the same language as everyone else.  Authors should use common words to say uncommon things.  But they do just the opposite.  We find them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, and to clothe their very ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-way expressions.  Their sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts.  They take so much pleasure in bombast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated, affected, hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their prototype is Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently told to say what he had to say like a man of this world.[1]

[Footnote 1:  King Henry IV., Part II.  Act v.  Sc. 3.]

There is no expression in any other language exactly answering to the French stile empese; but the thing itself exists all the more often.  When associated with affectation, it is in literature what assumption of dignity, grand airs and primeness are in society; and equally intolerable.  Dullness of mind is fond of donning this dress; just as an ordinary life it is stupid people who like being demure and formal.

An author who writes in the prim style resembles a man who dresses himself up in order to avoid being confounded or put on the same level with a mob—­a risk never run by the gentleman, even in his worst clothes.  The plebeian may be known by a certain showiness of attire and a wish to have everything spick and span; and in the same way, the commonplace person is betrayed by his style.