le it is emphatic in Sappho, in Byron, and in Shelley. Again, the
supreme literary gift does not imply any special expression of truth or
instruction, moral, religious or other. Homer and Dante cannot both be
right. If Homer is right, then Dante is lamentably wrong; and if Dante
is right, Goethe is unforgivably wrong. Wordsworth cannot be harmonized
with Shelley. Milton was a Puritan, Keats a neo-pagan. In the domain of
literal and historical truth what becomes of _Gulliver's Travels_, or
Scott's novels, or, for the matter of that, _Paradise Lost_?

All this is self-evident. Yet, if we do not ask our superlative writers
to be heaven-sent teachers, to be prophets, to be discoverers, what do
we ask of them? Is it to write in a particular style, in a given lucid
style, a given figurative style, or a given dignified style? Nay, it is
only very mediocre writers who could obey such precepts. Every supreme
writer has his own style, inalienable and inimitable, which is as much a
part of him as his own soul, the look in his eyes, or his tones of
voice. Bethink yourselves of Carlyle, how his abrupt, crabbed, but
withal sinewy and picturesque, prose compares with the pure crystalline
sentences of Cardinal Newman, and how these again compare with the
quaintly and pathetically humorous chat, the idealized talk of Charles
Lamb. Think how easy it is to recognize a line of Shakespeare, of
Milton, or of Wordsworth, almost by the ear; how audibly they are
stamped with the character of their creator. There are, in fact, exactly
as many styles as there are superlative writers. Indeed this
individuality of style is the outward and visible sign of their inward
and spiritual literary gift, which is the gift to express--_oneself_.

* * * * *

Then what does the superlative writer do? The fact is that literature in
the proper sense is an art, as much an art as painting or sculpture or
music. The supreme masters in literature are artists, and the consensus
of the world, though unconsciously, comes to judge them simply as
such--not as thinkers or teachers, sages or prophets. They are artists.

And what is the province of art? After all the definitions and
discussions are exhausted, we are, I believe, brought down to one solid
answer, the answer of Goethe, "art is only the giving of shape and
form." That is to say, the object of art, whether in words or colours or
shapes or sounds, is simply to give expression to a