[115] fr. 95: 'Star of evening, bringing all things that bright dawn has scattered, you bring the sheep, you bring the goat, you bring the child back to its mother.' than like Byron, O Hesperus, thou bringest all good things-- Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer, To the young bird the parent's brooding wings, The welcome stall to the o'er-laboured steer; Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, Whate'er our household gods protect of dear, Are gathered round us by thy look of rest; Thou bring'st the child too to its mother's breast. Something may be said in favour of both methods. Amplitude of treatment and fullness of detail enrich the imagination while economy stimulates it. The latter may become jejune, and is safe only in the hands of great writers: the former is apt to provide too rich a feast and to leave the full-fed mind inert. Everything is done for it and nothing left it to do. Economy on the other hand throws the reader on his own resources. It sets the imagination wandering in the fields of infinity. Some readers find this one of the essential delights of literature, though others prefer that the author should take them by the hand and indicate every detail with the precision of the sign-posts at a German _Kurort_. Economy is the reflection in literature of that σωφροσυνη {sôphrosynê}, which is the most deeply-rooted of Greek ideals, the most untranslatable of Greek words. But it was helped by an accident. If the art of printing were lost, modern works would contract within narrower limits, and the Greek economy was encouraged by the fact that Fust was not yet born. We, who do not rely on hand-copying for the propagation of our books, naturally write at greater length: and while it loses in conciseness, literature has a compensating gain in amplitude. But the habit of writing for money, which encourages abundant production, and the existence of the printing-press, which makes it easy, expose us to dangers from which the ancients were free. The newspapers are the worst offenders, saying many things which need not be said at all, and saying everything in a superfluous and excessive way. But literature suffers hardly less. The greatest figures of the last fifty years, such as Browning, Meredith, Hardy and Conrad, dilute their pages with unessential, if not inferior, stuff, and produce writing which has not received the _summa manus_. Had their work been less by a half--a modest reduction--it would have been more perfect because more time could have been devoted to it, more powerful because each stroke would have been precise and strong, more telling because these strokes would not have been combined with ineffective blows. This is even truer of lesser men and other forms of literature. It is because the _Agricola_ of Tacitus extends to but thirty pages, that the biography of a Roman civil servant of no great genius will outlive those of far greater men.