Page:On translating Homer. Last words. A lecture given at Oxford.djvu/43

32 who has a sense for it, will feel it a thousand times better from repeating those lines than from hearing anything I can say about it.

Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling what we say by examples. I think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject. I think this definition will be found to cover all instances of the grand style in poetry which present themselves. I think it will be found to exclude all poetry which is not in the grand style. And I think it contains no terms which are obscure, which themselves need defining. Even those who do not understand what is meant by calling poetry noble, will understand, I imagine, what is meant by speaking of a noble nature in a man. But the noble or powerful nature,—the bedeutendes individuum of Goethe,—is not enough. For instance, Mr. Newman has zeal for learning, zeal for thinking, zeal for liberty, and all these things are noble, they ennoble a man; hut he has not the poetical gift: there must be the poetical gift, the ‘divine faculty,’ also. And, besides all this, the subject must be a serious one (for it is only by a kind of license that we can speak of the grand style in comedy); and it must be treated with simplicity or severity. Here is the great difficulty: the poets of the world have been many; there has been wanting neither abundance of poetical gift nor abundance