Page:On translating Homer. Last words. A lecture given at Oxford.djvu/42

Rh do not define these words sufficiently, that I do not tell them enough about them. ‘The grand style,—but what is the grand style?’—they cry; some with an inclination to believe in it, but puzzled; others mockingly and with incredulity. Alas! the grand style is the last matter in the world for verbal definition to deal with adequately. One may say of it as is said of faith: ‘One must feel it in order to know what it is.’ But, as of faith, so too one may say of nobleness, of the grand style: ‘Woe to those who know it not!’ Yet this expression, though indefinable, has a charm; one is the better for considering it; bonum est, nos hic esse; nay, one loves to try to explain it, though one knows that one must speak imperfectly. For those, then, who ask the question,—What is the grand style?—with sincerity, I will try to make some answer, inadequate as it must be. For those who ask it mockingly I have no answer, except to repeat to them, with compassionate sorrow, the Gospel words: Moriemini in peccatis vestris,—Ye shall die in your sins.

But let me, at any rate, have the pleasure of again giving, before I begin to try and define the grand style, a specimen of what it is:

There is the grand style in perfection; and any one