Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/139

 living; we know what those who have spoken and written it since thought and think about it; and we have our own independent, but in this case fully informed, judgement to be the sovereign guide. We find that there is undoubtedly a prevalent style in Dante: and that this is of a peculiar gravity, the gravest style perhaps in all literature, yet in no sense stiff or stilted, and not (to some tastes) at all affected. But it seems, to some at least, that this style is very largely influenced, and even to some considerable extent produced, by the metre—which is of an intense idiosyncrasy, and though not in the least monotonous, curiously uniform in general atmosphere—much more so indeed than the Greek hexameter, and quite infinitely more so than the English blank verse. We find, further, that Dante has no exclusive preference for lofty images or even expressions: and that though he will use the most elaborate and carefully-sifted poetic-pictorial diction, his Grand Style is not so much a matter of that as of the suffused atmosphere or aura spoken of above. There is in fact, in the old sense of the word as applied to music, a Dantesque mode—pervading everything and affecting grotesque, extravagance, pedantry—(these are not my words, but such as others use)—almost or quite as much as the grander parts themselves. Breaking chronological order, for obvious reasons, we come to Milton, and here again we find something all-pervading. But its nature is different: and so is the nature of its pervasion. It is practically independent of metre—for the peculiarity of blank verse is that it imposes no character of its own, but takes that of its writer—'blankness' in the worst sense; the 'tumid gorgeousness' which Johnson, not without some excuse, mistook for its differentia; or a varied magnificence in the best and strictest sense of that word, which knows no limit and accepts no rule. The Miltonic style is quite above the Miltonic metre in one sense of 'above', though hardly in another; it is perceivable almost equally, in the com-