wandering away with it from the immediate subject. Jealous, if he
have a really quickening motive within, of all that does not hold
directly to that, of the facile, the otiose, he will never depart
from the strictly pedestrian process, unless he gains a ponderable
something thereby. Even assured of its congruity, he will still
question its serviceableness. Is it worth while, can we afford, to
attend to just that, to just that figure or literary reference, just
then?--Surplusage! he will dread that, as the runner on his muscles.
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 [20]
the finished work to be, lying somewhere, according to Michelangelo's
fancy, in the rough-hewn block of stone.

And what applies to figure or flower must be understood of all other
accidental or removable ornaments of writing whatever; and not of
specific ornament only, but of all that latent colour and imagery
which language as such carries in it. A lover of words for their own
sake, to whom nothing about them is unimportant, a minute and
constant observer of their physiognomy, he will be on the alert not
only for obviously mixed metaphors of course, but for the metaphor
that is mixed in all our speech, though a rapid use may involve no
cognition of it. Currently recognising the incident, the colour, the
physical elements or particles in words like absorb, consider,
extract, to take the first that occur, he will avail himself of them,
as further adding to the resources of expression. The elementary
particles of language will be realised as colour and light and shade
through his scholarly living in the full sense of them. Still
opposing the constant degradation of language by those who use it
carelessly, he will not treat coloured glass as if it were clear; and