SOLVES.

Simplicity

AN English writer bids us turn to Palgrave's "Golden Treasury" and learn the lesson of simplicity. Simplicity—is there any greater virtue to be striven after, whether in prose or in verse? Yet simplicity is perhaps the hardest of all qualities to attain. For simplicity comes from a straightforward look upon life, a real honesty of soul, an open purpose; in short, to write simply, to write with sincerity and with truth, means to live simply, to live with the same sincerity and with the same kind of truth. All genius is wonderful in this simple unaffectedness. The great poet does not write with a view to the impression he will presently be making; to the applause he hopes to win; he writes as the heart dictates, with emotion pure and effort impersonal; he works along an irresistible current nor deviates to pamper to the petty spirit of lesser men.

Simplicity is to see the significance of small things. All great minds are, in fact, the simplest minds, probably because the really great man, the man who lives with great thoughts, cannot appreciate the mean, contemptible, restricted views and actions of his smaller brethren. The great man rises to a plane of selection; he knows the futility of the artificial, he has passed the day of pride in his own achievements; he realizes the incapacities of men and does not vaunt an intelligence which he knows is, after all, but inferior.