But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home; or to another last word in which a poet greater still was almost certainly thinking, like Browning and Tennyson, of his own life and its approaching close :

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame ; nothing but well and fair,

And what may quiet us in a death so noble. The storm has done its work and is passed, leaving this great peace behind it :

All is best, though we oft doubt
What the unsearchable dispose
Of highest wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft he seems to hide his face
But unexpectedly returns,
And to his faithful champion hath in place
Bore witness gloriously ; whence Gaza mourns,
And all that band them to resist
His uncontrollable intent :
His servants he with new acquist
Of true experience from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismissed,

And calm of mind, all passion spent. Milton has greater things than this elsewhere, but he has nothing that illustrates better the power of the great style. It is stern and bare like the great mountains; and as strangely, as inexplicably, moving. The wide-ranging intellect has received its final answer and will go on no more journeys ; the storm-tossed and much-suffering soul is at last at rest.

Of course no poet can long maintain the Grand Style quite at such a level of severity as this, or would escape monotony if he did. What is meant by saying that a poem is in the Grand Style throughout is that no considerable proportion of it is out of key with that style. That is obviously true of the

Dute

Bishop Blougram and the
the truth arrived at by a ser
the truth that exists self-poi
of an artist or a saint. Dant
who have been through a g?
indelible mark upon them. I
life are tremendous things,
at the childishness of mer!
speaking; and, full as they
yet know well that greatnes,
ears to hear the true musis
those who have eyes to see
glimpses of all this, but he
his mind was too kaleidosco
grand manner. His note is
been through many experie!
he was willing to toss back
tional battle after dinner.
and he loved it in fine fashio
too much hurry and exciter
particular thing we are look
the calm than to the storn
give it but that which the sto
from the Epilogue to Asola».

One who never turned his ba

Never doubted cloud Never dreamed, though rig

triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffl

Sleep to wake.

That has all sorts of inspir I do not hear in it. It is 1 musical, its discords as yet to exact thing we mean we n parallel poem by a greater i

But he seems to be equally willing to give her such rhetorical crudities as

Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness.
He makes the scene between Hubert and Arthur a wonder of
pathos and beauty ; but he crowds it with fanciful conceits
that have on them the stamp of Elizabethanism, not that of
the Grand Style ; it is but a few lines that separate such
a thing as

Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away,
And I will sit as quiet as a lamb.

'om

The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,
Approaching near these eyes would drink my tears

And quench his fiery indignation.
What zen in Troilus and Cressida it is the same Ulysses who says :

Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows ! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead ;-
His terme el who also says :

That were to enlard his fat-already pride,
And add more coals to Cancer when he burns
With entertaining great Hyperion.

Bore vite

Salon lepas at us be bold enough to lay hands on a still more famous

nothing that is stern and be as inexplicabili Tereived its the storm

g and take a finer distinction. The last speech of
teo is the glorious crown of the play which is the very
ce and undying flower of all romance ; yet even there, if
e quite honest with ourselves, is it not true that after

0, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh ;-

that the legal metaphor about sealing

Grand Styletme ve it is out of here

Paradise Lost ; it is also true of the Divine Comedy, and perhaps, though I think with less certainty, of the Iliad. The greatest things in the Iliad, Priam and Achilles, Helen and Priam, Hector and Andromache, are altogether out of Milton's reach, and probably out of Dante's too ; but neither Milton nor Dante would have been content to leave so many deserts of confused and rather meaningless fighting, all details and incidents, with little or none of that sense of the big issues behind them which the Grand Style will not dispense with, and which scarcely for a moment fails Dante or Milton.

But let us come to a name still greater, perhaps, even than any of these. Is it to be said that Shakespeare is always, or even almost always, in the Grand Style ? Take some of the characters in which his creative genius is seen in splendid activity and his power over words, over expression, over style, is exhibited to the full ; take the Bastard, take Iago, take Falstaff. Is it the Grand Style that they talk ? Surely not, if words are to retain any meaning. And why not? Becausewith the exception of a moment now and then—the talk of these characters does not deal with great subjects, or, if it does, the manner of its doing so has neither the severity nor the noble simplicity of the Grand Style. Their thoughts have in them nothing of that sense of the bigness of things of which I spoke just now, and their words none of the solemn music which comes from those who have that sense and the power to give utterance to it.

But it is possible to go further. Take characters of a different sort to whom Shakespeare intended to give, and indeed gave, high qualities and high utterance. To such characters on serious occasions Homer, Dante, and Milton always give the Grand Style. But does Shakepeare? I think not; by no means always, that is. He gives Constance such lines as only he can give :

There was not such a gracious creature born.

But he seems to be equally willing to give her such rhetorical crudities as

Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness. He makes the scene between Hubert and Arthur a wonder of pathos and beauty ; but he crowds it with fanciful conceits that have on them the stamp of Elizabethanism, not that of the Grand Style ; it is but a few lines that separate such a thing as

Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away,

And I will sit as quiet as a lamb. from

The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,
Approaching near these eyes would drink my tears

And quench his fiery indignation.
So in Troilus and Cressida it is the same Ulysses who says :

Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows ! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead ;and who also says :

That were to enlard his fat-already pride,
And add more coals to Cancer when he burns

With entertaining great Hyperion. Or let us be bold enough to lay hands on a still more famous thing and take a finer distinction. The last speech of Romeo is the glorious crown of the play which is the very essence and undying flower of all romance ; yet even there, if we are quite honest with ourselves, is it not true that after

O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh; we have a feeling that the legal metaphor about sealing