Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/121



adventure of this paper may appear extravagant, but it has seemed to me perhaps not unfitting, if not for myself, yet for the person whom the English Association has thought fit to choose for its president in the third centenary year of the publication of the Sonnets. Nor is the adventurer, however moderate his prowess, quite untried in the kind, at any rate, of the quest. Some years ago, at the request of the Dante Society, I wrote and read a paper, as yet unpublished, on the relation of that great poet to the mysterious entity called the Grand Style; and last year I ventured to deal with Milton in the same way, before the Royal Society of Literature. The opportunity of completing the trio was tempting, and I can only hope that I have not been tempted to too great a failure.

It is always in such a case as a ceremony desirable, though except as a ceremony it can hardly be necessary, to disclaim any intention of direct controversy. Such controversy would be, in this case, with the founder or re-founder of all recent discussion on the present subject, Mr. Matthew Arnold. I do not share his views: but controversy in detail would be quite out of place in such a paper as this, and, in reference to a dead antagonist, it would lack even the piquancy which, when carried on between the living, it seems to possess for many, I cannot say I think to the best, tastes. It is sufficient to remind you that Mr. Arnold could only accord to Shakespeare what I have elsewhere called a sort of 'uncovenanted'—Grand Style an occasional magnificence,