Nothing can make up in a writer for the want of lucidity. It is one
of the cardinal literary virtues. If the page is not clear, if we see
through it as through a glass darkly, if there is the least blur or
opacity, the work to that extent is condemned. It is a false notion
that some thoughts or ideas are necessarily obscure, or complex, or
involved. Ideas are what we make them. If we think obscurely, our
ideas are obscure; if one’s mental activity is complex, his ideas are
complex. Always is the mind of the writer the medium through which we
see his matter. Such a poet as George Meredith thinks obscurely. There
is a large blind spot in his mind, so that at times an almost total
eclipse passes over his page. Strain one’s vision as one may, one
cannot make out just what he is trying to say. Then there are lucid
intervals--strong, telling lines; then the shadow falls again and the
reader is groping in the dark. The difficulty is never innate in his
subject, but is in the poet’s use of language, as if at times he caught
at words blindly and used them without reference to their accepted
meanings, as when be says of the skylark, “He _drinks_ his hurried
flight and drops.” How can one adjust his mind to the notion of a bird
drinking its own flight?