Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/259

 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 anyrate, have the pleasure of again giving, before I begin to try and define the grand style, a specimen of what it is.

Standing on earth, not wrapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues

There is the grand style in perfection; and anyone 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,