Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/170

 we have seen, of religion, at least it improved, by a shade or two of more scrupulous finish, on the old pattern; and the new era, like the Neu-zeit of the German enthusiasts at the beginning of our own century, might perhaps be discerned, awaiting one just a single step onward—the perfected new manner, in the consummation of time, alike as regards the things of the imagination and the actual conduct of life.

These three specimens are, I think, all easily recognizable as by English writers. Without going back of 1776, one could readily extend the exhibit by adding, for instance, specimens of Johnson, Reynolds, Landor, Macaulay, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Ruskin, Stevenson, and Mr. Chesterton. All these writers show traits due to a common classical ancestry and to an unbroken English tradition. Though several of them have given their names to stylistic excesses—as the "Macaulayese" antithesis, the "Chestertonian" paradox—most of them are truly representative men, that is, men whose individual genius expresses with emphasis and splendor a spirit common to all classicists of George III's time, or to all Edinburgh reviewers, or to all neo-romantic Tories, or what not. Many of them have been widely influential in America. In the earlier numbers of "The North American Review" one can find specimens of "Macaulayese." A description of the Milan cathedral in a short story by Henry James in the 'sixties contains perfectly constructed "Ruskinian" sentences. Henry van Dyke has worn the "Stevensonian" velvet jacket in his day. And