Homeliness is almost as great a
merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there.
It is next to beauty, and a very high art. Some have this merit
only. The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar
experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression. Very
few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They
overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor.
They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they
speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than
by addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper
speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe,
is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of
nature. Better that the primrose by the river's brim be a yellow
primrose, and nothing more, than that it be something less.
Aubrey relates of Thomas Fuller that his was "a very working
head, insomuch that, walking and meditating before dinner, he
would eat up a penny loaf, not knowing that he did it. His
natural memory was very great, to which he added the art of
memory.
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