"
Excellent, but does this apply to every kind of literary art? What would
become of Montaigne if you blew away his allusions, and drove him out of
"the allusive way," where he gathers and binds so many flowers from all
the gardens and all the rose-hung lanes of literature? Montaigne sets
forth to write an Essay on Coaches. He begins with a few remarks on
seasickness in the common pig; some notes on the Pont Neuf at Paris
follow, and a theory of why tyrants are detested by men whom they have
obliged; a glance at Coaches is then given, next a study of Montezuma's
gardens, presently a brief account of the Spanish cruelties in Mexico and
Peru, last--_retombons a nos coches_--he tells a tale of the Inca, and
the devotion of his Guard: _Another for Hector_!
The allusive style has its proper place, like another, if it is used by
the right man, and the concentrated and structural style has also its
higher province. It would not do to employ either style in the wrong
place. In a rambling discursive essay, for example, a mere straying
after the bird in the branches, or the thorn in the way, he might not
take the safest road who imitated Mr.
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