 false conclusion,« said Tinto; »I hate it, Peter, as I hate an
unfilled cann. I will grant you, indeed, that speech is a faculty of some value
in the intercourse of human affairs, and I will not even insist on the doctrine
of that Pythagorean toper, who was of opinion that, over a bottle, speaking
spoiled conversation. But I will not allow that a professor of the fine arts has
occasion to embody the idea of his scene in language, in order to impress upon
the reader its reality and its effect. On the contrary, I will be judged by most
of your readers, Peter, should these tales ever become public, whether you have
not given us a page of talk for every single idea which two words might have
communicated, while the posture, and manner, and incident, accurately drawn, and
brought out by appropriate colouring, would have preserved all that was worthy
of preservation, and saved these everlasting said he's and said she's, with
which it has been your pleasure to encumber your pages.«
    I replied, »That he confounded the operations of the pencil and the pen;
that the serene and silent art, as painting has been called by one of our first
living poets, necessarily appealed to the eye, because it had not the organs for
addressing the ear; whereas poetry, or that species of composition which
approached to it, lay under the necessity of doing absolutely the reverse, and
addressed itself to the ear, for the purpose of exciting that interest which it
could not attain through the medium of the eye.«
    Dick was not a whit staggered by my argument, which he contended was founded
on misrepresentation. »Description,« he said, »was to the author of a romance
exactly what drawing and tinting were to a painter; words were his colours, and,
if properly employed, they could not fail to place the scene, which he wished to
conjure up, as effectually before the mind's eye, as the tablet or canvas
presents it to the bodily organ. The same rules,« he contended, »applied to
both, and an exuberance of dialogue, in the former case, was a verbose and
laborious mode of composition which went to confound the proper art of
fictitious narrative with that of the drama, a widely different species of
composition, of which dialogue was the very essence, because all, excepting the
language to be made use of, was presented to the eye by the dresses, and
persons, and actions of the performers upon the stage. But
