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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: taste or pure reason, must be held upon the stretch to make
it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so complete
a pleasure. From the arrangement of according letters, which
is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture
of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act
of the pure intellect, there is scarce a faculty in man but
has been exercised. We need not wonder, then, if perfect
sentences are rare, and perfect pages rarer.
CHAPTER II - THE MORALITY OF THE PROFESSION OF LETTERS (11)
THE profession of letters has been lately debated in the
public prints; and it has been debated, to put the matter
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