lly'
altogether. The truth is, that there is a great gulf fixed between those
who naturally dislike the ornate, and those who naturally love it. There
is no remedy; and to attempt to ignore this fact only emphasises it the
more. Anyone who is jarred by the expression 'prodigal blazes' had
better immediately shut up Sir Thomas Browne. The critic who admits the
jar, but continues to appreciate, must present, to the true enthusiast,
a spectacle of curious self-contradiction.

If once the ornate style be allowed as a legitimate form of art, no
attack such as Mr. Gosse makes on Browne's latinisms can possibly be
valid. For it is surely an error to judge and to condemn the latinisms
without reference to the whole style of which they form a necessary
part. Mr. Gosse, it is true, inclines to treat them as if they were a
mere excrescence which could be cut off without difficulty, and might
never have existed if Browne's views upon the English language had been
a little different. Browne, he says, 'had come to the conclusion that
classic words were the only legitimate ones, the only ones which
interpreted with elegance the thoughts of a sensitive and cultivated
man, and that the rest were barbarous.' We are to suppose, then, that if
he had happened to hold the opinion that Saxon words were the only
legitimate ones, the _Hydriotaphia_ would have been as free from words
of classical derivation as the sermons of Latimer. A very little
reflection and inquiry will suffice to show how completely mistaken this
view really is. In the first place, the theory that Browne considered
all unclassical words 'barbarous' and unfit to interpret his thoughts,
is clearly untenable, owing to the obvious fact that his writings are
full of instances of the deliberate use of such words. So much is this
the case, that Pater declares that a dissertation upon style might be
written to illustrate Browne's use of the words 'thin' and 'dark.' A
striking phrase from the _Christian Morals_ will suffice to show the
deliberation with which Browne sometimes employed the latter word:--'the
areopagy and dark tribunal of our hearts.' If Browne had thought the
Saxon epithet 'barbarous,' why should he have gone out of his way to use
it, when 'mysterious' or 'secret' would have expressed his meaning? The
truth is clear enough. Browne saw that 'dark' was the one word which
would give, better than any other, the precise impression of mystery and
secrecy which he intended