Page:Stevenson - The Art of Writing (1905).djvu/52

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38
THE ART OF WRITING

  Puffing at all, winnows the light away;
                            W. P. F. L.
  And what hath mass and matter by itself
                            W. F. L. M. Ă.
  Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.'[1]
                            V. L. M.

From these delicate and choice writers I turned with some curiosity to a player of the big drum—Macaulay. I had in hand the two-volume edition, and I opened at the beginning of the second volume. Here was what I read:

'The violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore not strange that the government of Scotland, having been during many years greatly more corrupt than the government of England, should have fallen with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the last king of the house of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland destructive. The English complained not of the law, but of the violation of the law.'

This was plain-sailing enough; it was our

  1. Troilus and Cressida.