But if we
would appreciate the flow that is in these books, we must expect
to feel it rise from the page like an exhalation, and wash away
our critical brains like burr millstones, flowing to higher
levels above and behind ourselves. There is many a book which
ripples on like a freshet, and flows as glibly as a mill-stream
sucking under a causeway; and when their authors are in the full
tide of their discourse, Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus halt
beside them. Their long, stringy, slimy sentences are of that
consistency that they naturally flow and run together. They read
as if written for military men, for men of business, there is
such a despatch in them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers
and philosophers seem not to have got their swaddling-clothes
off; they are slower than a Roman army in its march, the rear
camping to-night where the van camped last night. The wise
Jamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery slough.
"How many thousands never heard the name
Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books?
And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame,
And seem to bear down all the world with looks.
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