Really, I've seen it happen on other lists: one or two people begin posting
several long  messages every day, and after week or two the list's
membership drops off. With all possible good will, most people just don't
have enough hours to handle the sudden increase in reading time, and of
course e-mail isn't well adapted to long texts. The scroll isn't as good a
design as the codex.

So can we think about the classical ideal of _multum in parvo_?

We might remember too that the aged Ezra Pound broke silence to pay a
funeral  tribute to his good friend Marianne Moore, author of a poem called
"To a Snail" which begins:

If "compression is the first grace of style,"
you have it. Contractility is a virtue
as modesty is a virtue.

Jonathan Morse