ne left unfinished--and whose opening chapters when published
proved so admirable--had been begun by him, as it appeared, in five
different ways. Yet how many young collegians have at this moment in
their desks the manuscript of their first novel, and have considered it
a piece of heroic toil if they have once revised it!

It is to rebuke this literary indolence, and to afford a perpetual
standard of high art, that the study of Greek ought to be retained in
our schools. The whole future of our literature may depend upon it; to
abandon it is deliberately to forego the very highest models. There is
no other literature which so steadily reproaches a young
writer,--nothing else by which he may sustain himself till he forms a
high standard of his own. Not that he should attempt direct imitations,
which are almost always failures as such, however attractive in other
respects; witness Swinburne's "Atalanta." But the true use of Greek
literature is perpetually to remind us what a wondrous thing literary
art may be,--capable of what range of resources, of what thoroughness in
structure, of what perfection in detail. It is a remarkable fact, that
the most penetrating and fearless of all our writers, Thoreau,--he who
made Nature his sole mistress, and shook himself utterly free from human
tradition,--yet clung to Greek literature as the one achievement of man
that seemed worthy to take rank with Nature, pronouncing it "as refined,
as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself."

These are the qualities of style that seem most obviously
important,--simplicity, freshness, structure, choice of words, and
thoroughness both of preparation and of finish. Yet, in aiming at
literary art, it must be remembered that all the cardinal virtues go
into a good style, while each of the seven deadly sins tends to vitiate
a bad one. What a charm in the merit of humility, for instance, as it is
sometimes seen in style, leading to a certain self-restraint and
moderation of tone, however weighty the argument! How great the power of
an habitual under-statement, on which in due season one strong thought
rises like an ocean-crest, and breaks, and sweeps onward, lavishing
itself in splendor! What a glorious gift of heaven would have been the
style of Ruskin, for instance, could he but have contained himself, and
put forth only half his strength, instead of always planting, in the
words of old Fuller, "a piece of ordnance to batter down an