tries of the late Matthew Arnold to English Letters, none has been more pronounced or helpful, than his earnest insistence, as the self-appointed apostle of culture, upon the necessity of poetic style in English prose. No literary product, he would tell us, is worthy the high appellation of literary until it is shapely and comely in its structural form. Style, as the art of presentation, must, in the nature of things, be made presentable. Such teachings as these are eminently timely and, when more fully exemplified than now, will serve to show the true indebtedness of prose to verse and, thereby, also, show the law of literary unity.

THE POETIC STYLE.

Examples.

Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in a taking shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it constant as the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no hopeless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge and never-fading flush and neverhushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet blue, gentian blue, peacock blue, river-of-paradise blue, glass of a painted window melted in the sun and the witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever from her snow.-Ruskin's "Praeterita."

My dream expanded and moved forward. I trod again the dust of Posilipo, soft as the feathers in the wings of Sleep. I emerged on Baia; I crossed her innumerable arches; I loitered in the breezy sunshine of her mole; I trusted the faithful seclusion of her caverns, the keepers of so many secrets; and I reposed on the buoyancy of her tepid sea. Then Naples and her theatres and her churches, and grottoes and

dells and forts and promontories rushed forward in confusion, now among soft whispers, now among sweetest sounds, and subsided and sank and disappeared. Yet a memory seemed to come fresh from every one; each had time enough for its tale, for its pleasure, for its reflection, for its pang. As I mounted with silent steps the narrow staircase of the old palace, how distinctly did I feel against the palm of my hand the coldness of that smooth stone-work.-Landor's "Pentameron."

The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had traveled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and fallen monarch. Still, however, his dying splendor gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapors, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers; some, touched with gold; some, with purple; some, with a hue of deep and dark red. Nearer to the beach, the tide rippled around in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand.-Sir Walter Scott's "Antiquary."

But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the ruffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of mid-day, but, also, with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. The wooden houses, with their jutting

stones and quaint gable-peaks; the door-steps and thresholds, with the early grass springing up about them; the gardenplots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn and, even in the market-place, margined with green on either side-all were visible.-Hawthorne's" Scarlet Letter."

CHAPTER VII.

STYLE AND SATIRE.

(The Satirical Style.)

HISTORICALLY, satire is an old Roman or Latin form, in its origin, and may be said to have had its first embodiment in the writings of Ennius, 240 B. C.-190 B. C. Still more accurately, it assumed, for the first time, its more distinctive and modern character in the works of Lucilius, 148 B. C.-103 B. C. It was Lucilius who first wrote of men and manners in that peculiar strain now common to satire, and established it on a literary basis, from which it has not materially departed. After a period of nearly half a century, the great satirist of the Augustan age arose, 65 B. C.-8 B. C., in the person of Horace, author of no less than thirty distinct satires, in addition to numerous compositions more or less satirical.

Passing over to the Christian era, 34-62 A. D., Persius appears, author of several satires, and connected, in Latin literary history, with his successor and superior, the renowned Juvenal. The date