ABSTRACT
And yet the prodigy is not really so marvellous as it seems at first, and the problem resolves itself somewhat after the same fashion as the old school question of the lever-what you gain in power you lose in time. The more octavos the looser stuff. It smacks of a paradox, but is none the less true, that all this incredible effusion of writing-ink is not a sign of passionate industry, as you might suppose, but a phase of sheer and incurable idleness. Even this notice, slight as it is, would give us a deal less trouble if we let it run to twice the length. Compression is the mark of careful workmanship, and it takes less real power out of a man and gives fewer headaches to write a folio full of scimble-scamble, skirmishing literature than to fashion a dozen sonnets into perfect shape.
