Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/724

714 but it should not be affected. To have a manner of one's own is an admirable thing, but to have a mannerism of one's own is perhaps not quite so admirable. It is curious that his unfortunately successful pursuit of this latter possession should have led Mr. Arnold to adopt a style which has more than any other the fault he justly censured twenty years ago as the special vice of modern art — the fault of the fantastic. No doubt the great masters of style have each a cachet which is easily decipherable by a competent student; no doubt, in spite of Lord Macaulay, Arbuthnot is to be distinguished from Swift, and the cunningest imitators of Voltaire from Voltaire himself. But to simulate this distinction by the deliberate adoption of mere tricks and manners is what no true master of style ever yet attempted, because for no true master of style was it ever yet necessary. Mr. Ruskin, to use the old Platonic simile, has not his horses sufficiently well in hand; at times the heavenly steed, with a strong and sudden flight, will lift the car amid the empyrean, at times the earth-born yoke-fellow will drag it down, with scarcely the assistance and scarcely the impediment of the charioteer. But even this is better than the driving of one who has broken his horses, indeed, but has broken them to little but the mincing graces of the Lady's Mile.

It is not possible to speak with equal definiteness of the style of a third master of English prose, who ranks in point of age and of reputation with Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Arnold. It would certainly be an over-hasty or an ill-qualified critic who should assert that Mr. Froude's style is always faultless; but, on the other hand, it may be asserted, without any fear whatever of contradiction carrying weight, that at its best it is surpassed by no style of the present day, and by few of any other, and that at its worst its faults are not of a venial character, for no fault in art is venial, but at any rate of a kind which may meet with more ready excuse than those of the writers previously noticed. These faults are perhaps two only — undue diffuseness and undue aiming at the picturesque. We have seen that these are the two most glaring faults of the age, and by his indulgence in them, and the splendid effects which he has produced by that indulgence, Mr. Froude has undoubtedly earned his place, if not as a säcularischer Mensch, at any rate as a representative man. No one, perhaps, who has read can fail to count among the triumphs of English prose the descriptions of the Pilgrimage of Grace in the "History," of Sir Richard Grenhvil's last fight in the "Short Studies," of the wreckers at Ballyhige in the "English in Ireland." There are also many shorter passages which exhibit almost every excellence that the most exacting critic could demand. But it is not to be denied that Mr. Froude has very frequently bowed the knee before the altar of Baal. It is unlawful to occupy twelve mighty volumes with the history of one nation during little more than half a century: it is unlawful for the sound critical reason of St. John, that if such a practice obtained universally, the world could not contain the books that should he written; and also for the reason that in such writing it is almost impossible to observe the reticence and compression which are among the lamps of style. It is unlawful to imagine and set down, except very sparingly, the colour of which the trees probably were at the time when kings and queens made their entrance into such and such a city, the buildings which they may or may not have looked upon, the thoughts which may or may not have occurred to them. Such sacrificings at the shrine of effect, such trespassings on the domains and conveying of the methods of other arts and alien muses, are not to be commended or condoned. But one must, at the same time, allow with the utmost thankfulness that there are whole paragraphs, if not whole pages, of Mr. Froude's, which, for practised skill of composition and for legitimate beauty of effect, may take their place among the proudest efforts of English art.

It will probably be agreed that the three writers whom I have noticed stand at the head of contemporary English prose authors in point of age and authority; but there are other and younger authors who must necessarily be noticed in any account of the subject which aims at completeness. Mr. Swinburne's progress as a prose-writer can hardly have failed to be a subject of interest, almost equally with his career as a poet, to every lover of our tongue. His earliest appearance, the essay on Byron, is even now in many respects characteristic of his work; but it does not contain — and it is a matter of sincere congratulation for all lovers of English prose that it does not contain — any passage at all equal to the magnificent descant on Marlowe, which closes its ten years younger brother, the essay on Chapman. In the work which has occupied this interval, the merits and defects of Mr. Swinburne as a