Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/244

218 218 THE ART OF MRS. MEYNELL tial statement. It is just a statement made pre- cisely in words of normal size and frequency of an experience open to us all, and gaining its beauty, its significance, its immortal claim upon the memory, from the application to that experience of the poised and perfect senses required to deal so delicately with words. " Only look closely enough, clearly enough,'* such writing seems to say to us, " only look with sufficient keenness and candour, and the commonest sight or experience will infallibly divulge a delicate, dramatic design. And only reproduce that design " (it continues, turning now particularly to those who write) "with sufficient fidelity, and your prose will have its pattern, its logic and surprises ; the words will spread neatly out before you, naturally com- posed, like a gaily coloured map. And if to this clarity of eyesight " (it seems to conclude) " there be but added, in poised measure, an equal sensitiveness to sound, then will the words, as they are sorted, fall automatically into a scheme that repeats the map in music, so that the meaning floats reflected in the overhanging aural mist, as in an inverted fairy mirror." Ill But if it is naturally in the Essays which deal with the universal elements of life, with Hills and Clouds and Rivers, Flowers and Rain, that we seem to catch most clearly this implicit testimony to the transforming power of honest vision, it is in the chapters where the subjects are humaner, where Mrs. Meynell deals with mortal idiosyncrasies and laws, that her sensibility makes discoveries beyond the reach of science, and formulates perceptions that make some of these pages almost sibylline. There is so much human wisdom in this book ! Meredith once imagined Carlyle listening to his wife whilst