Speaking generally it would seem that bombast is one of the hardest things to avoid in writing. For all those writers who are ambitious of a lofty style through dread of being convicted of feebleness and poverty of language slide by a natural gradation into the opposite extreme. "Who fails in great endeavour nobly fails" is their creed. 4 Now bulk when hollow and affected is always objectionable whether in material bodies or in writings and in danger of producing on us an impression of littleness: "nothing" it is said "is drier than a man with the dropsy."