rather the results that arise naturally and inevitably from the harmony wrought by spirit between mind and matter, and spirit is but another name for personality. If the resultant expression is not sincere, then it has no 1 claim to be called literature. Those who clamour for beauty of form regardless of content, and those who insist upon truth of matter careless of the form, are at cross-purposes. There can be no real beauty of form without truth, and truth would be false to its own nature did it not clothe itself in a garb that is fitting and beautiful. The supposed opposition simply does not exist. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

ILLUSTRATIVE READING

John Sterling's attempts to reform Carlyle's style form the most piquant feature of the Life of Sterling. Carlyle submitted to treatment more good-humouredly than might be expected, but without avail. As he characteristically puts it (ch. iii), "This is not your suit of clothes, it must be another's." There is an excellent paper on Ruskin's style in Sir Edward Cook's Literary Recreations, while Ruskin himself deals with the general question of style in Lectures on Art (III) The necessity of sincerity on which he lays so much stress is emphasized by any and every writer of moment who has put down his thoughts on the subject. Another example of the influence of environment may be seen in Church's Spenser (p. 88), where the author says, "It is idle to speculate what difference of form the Faerie Queene might have received, if the design had been carried out in the peace of England and in the society of London. But it is certain that the scene of trouble and danger in which it grew up greatly affected it." Lascelles Abercrombie uses this idea

in The Epic to show the difference between Homer and Beowulf. Reference may also be made to Willmott's Pleasures of Literature (ch. viii) and Hamerton's Intellectual Life (Part XII, Letter I). J. W. Mackail in Latin Literature draws attention to interesting parallels between that literature and our own. In a footnote to p. 385 of An Introduction to the Study of Literature W. H. Hudson quotes two or three striking examples of contemporary criticism.

EXERCISES

1. Read the following passages carefully, noting any peculiarities of style that seem to betray the authorship. Say to what conclusion you are led in each case.

(a)

(b)

Music do I hear?

Ha! Ha! keep time. How sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disorder'd string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;

For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,

Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.

When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrow. fullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine, by assembling in knots in the "towers of the vineyards,” and slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till evening.

(c) But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air :
So waste not thou.

(d) But you don't know music! Wherefore
Keep on casting pearls

To a-poet! All I care for
Is-to tell him that a girl's

"Love comes aptly in when gruff
Grows his singing. (There, enough!)

2. Ruskin says, "No noble or right style was ever yet founded

but out of a sincere heart." Discuss and illustrate this.

3. Show the reaction of environment on style in the case of Byron and Burns respectively.

4. Give examples of literary mannerisms other than those mentioned in the text.

5. "There must be," says Emerson, a man behind the book." Discuss this, adding the most noteworthy examples that occur to you.

CHAPTER XII

THE SUBLIME

Sublimity is the echo of a great soul.

LONGINUS

S we noted in a preceding chapter, it has been said that for the true appreciation of the best of the Waverley novels it is necessary to read them through at least six times. Certainly it cannot be disputed that if a book is worth reading at all it is worth rereading. Only thus can the reader have the opportunity of noting some of the many delights of literature. While he will not be so foolish as to despise that elemental pleasure in the breathless rush with which a vivacious story-teller carries him from point to point, he will nevertheless find it well worth while to retrace his steps and survey the ground at greater leisure. So he will be able to cast a delighted eye upon beautiful scenes lurking in unexpected corners, and catch sweet melodies that would be quite inaudible in the hurly-burly. He will have time, too, to study the personality of his author and guide, and to recognize in his tones that sincerity which is the unfailing mark of all memorable writing.

We have seen how differently personalities express themselves, and that it would be useless to expect the precision of Addison from Carlyle, for example, or the breadth of Charles Dickens from Jane Austen. In the same way it is found that the work of one author is by no means all upon one level. There are few, if any,

writers whom we can classify, without qualification, as first-, second-, or third-rate. The greatest will suddenly lapse into the banal, and astonish the devotee who has been fed exclusively upon choice snippets; while even the worst will upon occasion approach the sublime heights so nearly as to confound the critics. At times maximum power will happily coincide with maximum opportunity; personality at its highest will find fitting expression; and the greatness of the soul will be echoed in the writing: then, and then only, we have the truly sublime.

The sublime knows no rules—at least, none that can be applied by any outside authority. Longinus, it is true, speaks of the necessity of the curb as well as the spur for Pegasus, and shows that it is in the highest flights of grandeur that the writer is in greatest danger of losing his balance. But only the writer himself can guard effectively against that danger. No theoretical directions given him before he makes the ascent will insure that he will be able to cope successfully with unexpected difficulties. He must, in the event, depend upon his own resourcefulness. So, in this matter of the sublime, the critic has to beware of hasty judgments, and will find it best to preserve a becoming humility. Prognostications are vain as often as not. A writer, the general level of whose work encourages one to believe that he will accomplish the great feat, may prove a sad disappointment after all; while another who has been contemptuously disregarded does it while the critic's back is turned. The sublime crops up in all manner of unexpected places : it keeps strange company at times. Herein is seen the wisdom of that wise tolerance for which a plea was made in an earlier chapter. If we allow prejudice to blind us to the sublime in work which bears the stamp of an alien