Note 2 — Chapter XIII · [COMPOSED BY STERN.]

And yet we would be reduced to this if we condemned too soon an author who wished to prepare you for his catastrophe without having recourse to these screaming2 colours. But the danger of the other extreme is still greater. You despise the efforts of coarse literature, which thinks it must take your feelings by storm with such rough weapons; but if the author falls into the other extreme, if he sins by too much deviation from the principal matter, by too much pencilling, then your anger is still greater, and quite right; for then he has bored you, and that is unpardonable.