The Grand Style. NOTHING has raised more questioning among my critics than these words,-noble, the grand style. People complain that I do not define these words sufficiently, that I do not tell them enough about them. 5" The grand style,—but what is the grand style?"— they cry; some with an inclination to believe in it, but puzzled; others mockingly and with incredulity. Alas! the grand style is the last matter in the world for verbal definition to deal with adequately. One Io may say of it as is said of faith: "One must feel it in order to know what it is." But, as of faith, so too one may say of nobleness, of the grand style: "Woe to those who know it not!" Yet this expression, though indefinable, has a charm; one is the better for consid15 ering it; bonum est, nos hic esse; nay, one loves to try to explain it, though one knows that one must speak imperfectly. For those, then, who ask the question,— What is the grand style?—with sincerity, I will try to make some answer, inadequate as it must be. For those 20 who ask it mockingly I have no answer, except to repeat to them, with compassionate sorrow, the Gospel words: Moriemini in peccatis vestris,-Ye shall die in your sins. But let me, at any rate, have the pleasure of again giving, before I begin to try and define the grand 25 style, a specimen of what it is. ... Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues." There is the grand style in perfection; and any one 5 who has a sense for it, will feel it a thousand times better from repeating those lines than from hearing anything I can say about it. Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling what we say by examples. I think it will be found 10 that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble 1 nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject. I think this definition will gift nor abundance of noble natures; but a poetical gift so happy, in a noble nature so circumstanced and trained, that the result is a continuous style, perfect in simplicity or perfect in severity, has been extremely 5 rare. One poet has had the gifts of nature and faculty in unequalled fulness, without the circumstances and training which make this sustained perfection of style possible. Of other poets, some have caught this perfect strain now and then, in short pieces or single Io lines, but have not been able to maintain it through considerable works; others have composed all their productions in a style which, by comparison with the best, one must call secondary. The best model of the grand style simple is Homer; 15 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 20 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 25 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, 30 Salendo e rigirando la Montagna "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 5 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, 10 where a noble nature and a poetical gift unite to utter a thing with the most limpid plainness and clear ness: 66 'Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna Ch' io sarò là dove fia Beatrice; "2 15 "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 20 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 25 seems the grandest when we attend most to the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But 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 30 2 Ibid. xxiii. 127. 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 5 say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent production, the Night Thoughts. But the grand style in simplicity is inimitable : ΙΟ αἰὼν ἀσφαλὴς οὐκ ἔγεντ ̓ οὔτ ̓ Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ Πηλεῖ, οὔτε παρ' ἀντιθέῳ Κάδμῳ· λέγονται μὲν βροτῶν 3 There is a limpidness in that, a want of salient points 15 to seize and transfer, which makes imitation impossible, except by a genius akin to the genius which produced it.--On the Study of Celtic Literature and on Translating Homer, ed. 1895, pp. 264-269. 3" 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." |