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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: Cicero; and since Mr. Anthony Trollope is dead, I will. It
is a poor diet for the mind, a very colourless and toothless
'criticism of life'; but we enjoy the pleasure of a most
intricate and dexterous pattern, every stitch a model at once
of elegance and of good sense; and the two oranges, even if
one of them be rotten, kept dancing with inimitable grace.
Up to this moment I have had my eye mainly upon prose; for
though in verse also the implication of the logical texture
is a crowning beauty, yet in verse it may be dispensed with.
You would think that here was a death-blow to all I have been
saying; and far from that, it is but a new illustration of
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