Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/122

 chequered if not checkmated by styles the reverse of grand. It appears to me on the contrary that Shakespeare held the Grand Style in the hollow of his hand, letting it loose or withholding it as good seemed to him: and further, that the seeming almost always was good.

It has been often said in various forms, but hardly ever without truth, that all dispute turns upon difference of definition—and that, if people were only clear-witted enough and even-tempered enough, the arrival at definition would be the conclusion of the whole matter. For their differences of opinion would either disappear in the process, or they would be seen to be irreconcilable, and to possess no common ground on which argument is possible. My definition of the Grand Style is certainly wider than Mr. Arnold's, whose own seems to have been framed to insist upon that 'high seriousness' of his which is no doubt a grand thing. Mine would, I think, come nearer to the Longinian 'Sublime'—the perfection of expression in every direction and kind, the commonly called great and the commonly called small, the tragic and the comic, the serious, the ironic, and even to some extent the trivial (not in the worst sense, of course). Whenever this perfection of expression acquires such force that it transmutes the subject and transports the hearer or reader, then and there the Grand Style exists, for so long, and in such a degree, as the transmutation of the one and the transportation of the other lasts. It may persist, or cease, or disappear and re-appear, like a fixed or a revolving light, but there it is in essentia or in potentia. If, on the other hand, you limit the definition to the continual exertion of some such a transforming force, it seems to me that, in the first place, you are making an excessive and unnatural restriction, forgetful of neque semper arcum and other sayings of the wise, while, in the second place, as a consequence of the first error, you are preparing for yourself endless pitfalls. It is a question whether any writer, except perhaps Milton, will answer to