we
have a justifying example in one of the first poets of our time. How
illustrative of monosyllabic effect, of sonorous Latin, of the
phraseology of science, of metaphysic, of colloquialism even, are the
writings of Tennyson; yet with what a fine, fastidious scholarship
throughout!

A scholar writing for the scholarly, he will of course leave something
to the willing intelligence of his reader. "To go preach to the first
passer-by," says Montaigne, "to become tutor to the ignorance of the
first I meet, is a thing I abhor;" a thing, in fact, naturally
distressing to the scholar, who will therefore ever be shy of offering
uncomplimentary assistance to the reader's wit. To really strenuous
minds there is a pleasurable stimulus in the challenge for a continuous
effort on their part, to be rewarded by securer and more intimate grasp
of the author's sense. Self-restraint, a skilful economy of means,
ascesis, that too has a beauty of its own; and for the reader supposed
there will be an aesthetic satisfaction in that frugal closeness of
style which makes the most of a word, in the exaction from every
sentence of a precise relief, in the just spacing out of word to
thought, in the logically filled space connected always with the
delightful sense of difficulty overcome.

Different classes of persons, at different times, make, of course, very
various demands upon literature. Still, scholars, I suppose, and not
[18] only scholars, but all disinterested lovers of books, will always
look to it, as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a sort of cloistral
refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual world. A perfect poem
like Lycidas, a perfect fiction like Esmond, the perfect handling of a
theory like Newman's Idea of a University, has for them something of
the uses of a religious "retreat." Here, then, with a view to the
central need of a select few, those "men of a finer thread" who have
formed and maintain the literary ideal, everything, every component
element, will have undergone exact trial, and, above all, there will be
no uncharacteristic or tarnished or vulgar decoration, permissible
ornament being for the most part structural, or necessary. As the
painter in his picture, so the artist in his book, aims at the
production by honourable artifice of a peculiar atmosphere. "The
artist," says Schiller, "may be known rather by what he omits"; and in
literature, too, the true artist may be best recognised by his tact