think it will be found to exclude all poetry which is not in the grand style. And I think it contains no terms which are obscure, which themselves need defining. Even those who do not understand what is meant by calling poetry noble, will understand, I imagine, what is meant by speaking of a noble nature in a man. The best model of the grand style simple is Homer; perhaps the best model of the grand style. severe is Milton. But Dante is remarkable for affording admirable examples of both styles; he has the grand style which arises from simplicity, and he has the grand style which arises from severity; and from him I will illustrate them both. In a former lecture I pointed out what that severity of poetical style is, which comes from saying a thing with a kind of intense compression, or in an allusive, brief, almost haughty way, as if the poet's mind were charged with so many and such grave matters, that he would not deign to treat any one of them explicitly. Of this severity the last line of the following stanza of the Purgatory is a good example. Dante has been telling Forese that Virgil had guided him through Hell, and he goes on:— 'Indi m'han tratto su gli suoi conforti, Salendo e rigirando la Montagna Che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti.'* * Purgatorio xxiii. 124-6. 'Thence hath his comforting aid led me up, climbing and circling the mountain, which straightens you whom the world made crooked.' These last words, 'la Montagna che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti,' -'the Mountain which straightens you whom the world made crooked',- for the Mountain of Purgatory, I call an excellent specimen of the grand style in severity, where the poet's mind is too full charged to suffer him to speak more explicitly. But the very next stanza is a beautiful specimen of the grand style in simplicity, where a noble nature and a poetical gift unite to utter a thing with the most limpid plainness and clearness: • Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna Quivi convien che senza lui rimagna.'+ 'So long,' Dante continues, 'so long he (Virgil) saith he will bear me company, until I shall be there where Beatrice is; there it behoves that without him I remain.' But the noble simplicity of that in the Italian no words of mine can render. Both these styles, the simple and the severe, are truly grand; the severe seems, perhaps, the grandest, so long as we attend most to the great personality, to the noble nature, in the poet its author; the simple seems the grandest when we attend most to the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But + Purgatorio, xxiii. 127-9. the simple is no doubt to be preferred. It is the more magical: in the other there is something intellectual, something which gives scope for a play of thought which may exist where the poetical gift is either wanting or present in only inferior degree: the severe is much more imitable, and this a little spoils its charm. A kind of semblance of this style keeps Young going, one may say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent production, the Night Thoughts. But the grand style in simplicity is inimitable: αἰὼν ἀσφαλὴς οὐκ ἔγεντ ̓ οὔτ ̓ Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ Πηλεί, οὔτε παρ' ἀντιθέῳ Κάδμῳ· λέγονται μὲν βροτῶν ('A secure time fell to the lot neither of Peleus the son of Eacus, nor of the godlike Cadmus; howbeit these are said to have had, of all mortals, the supreme of happiness, who heard the golden-snooded Muses sing, one of them on the mountain (Pelion), the other in seven-gated Thebes.')' -Pindar, P. iii. 86-91. There is a limpidness in that, a want of salient points to seize and transfer, which makes imitation. impossible, except by a genius akin to the genius which produced it. -Matthew Arnold, Last Words on Translating V But, first of all, putting the question of who writes, or speaks, aside, do you, good reader, know good 'style' when you get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play: That is good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are good, or bad? I imagine that in most cases the reply would be given with hesitation, yet if you will give me a little patience, and take some accurate pains, I can show you the main tests of style in the space of a couple of pages. I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest, i. e. kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger, the second of love. (1) We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us: His present, and your pains, we thank you for. (2) My gracious Silence, hail! Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear And mothers that lack sons.'t Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness common to both these passages, so opposite in temper: A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense; this the first-of-first conditions, (see the King's own sentence just before, 'We are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto whose grace our passion is as subject As are our wretches fettered in our prisons'); and with this self-command, the supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to be uttered, before its utterance; so that each may come in its exact place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the misplacing of a word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, would destroy the 'style' in an instant. B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way; allowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without obscurity: (Thus, his present, and your pains, we thank you for' is better than 'we thank you for his present and your pains,' because the Dauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the Ambassador's pains; but when to these balls our rackets we have match'd,' would have spoiled the style in a mo |