in each and all of its apprehensions, the unity, the strict identity
with itself, of the apprehending mind. All the laws of good writing
aim at a similar unity or identity of the mind in all the processes
by which the word is associated to its import. The term is right,
and has its essential beauty, when it becomes, in a manner, what it
signifies, as with the names of simple sensations. To give the
phrase, the sentence, the structural member, the entire composition,
song, or essay, a similar unity with its subject and with itself:--
style is in the right way when it tends towards that. All depends
upon the original unity, the vital wholeness and identity, of the
initiatory apprehension or view. So much is true of all art, which
therefore requires always its logic, its comprehensive reason--
insight, foresight, retrospect, in simultaneous action--true, most of
all, of the literary art, as being of all the arts most closely
cognate to the abstract intelligence. Such logical coherency may be
evidenced not merely in the lines of composition as a whole, but in
the choice of a single word, while it by no means interferes with,
but may even prescribe, much variety, in the building of the sentence
for instance, or in the manner, argumentative, descriptive,
discursive, of this or that [23] part or member of the entire design.
The blithe, crisp sentence, decisive as a child's expression of its
needs, may alternate with the long-contending, victoriously intricate
sentence; the sentence, born with the integrity of a single word,
relieving the sort of sentence in which, if you look closely, you can
see much contrivance, much adjustment, to bring a highly qualified
matter into compass at one view. For the literary architecture, if
it is to be rich and expressive, involves not only foresight of the
end in the beginning, but also development or growth of design, in
the process of execution, with many irregularities, surprises, and
afterthoughts; the contingent as well as the necessary being subsumed