ross between prose and poetry. In judging Milton, however, we should
not forget that in verse the music makes a part of the meaning, and that
no one before or since has been able to give to simple pentameters the
majesty and compass of the organ. He was as much composer as poet.

How is it with Shakespeare? did he have no style? I think I find the
proof that he had it, and that of the very highest and subtlest kind, in
the fact that I can nowhere put my finger on it, and say it is here or
there.[1]

[Footnote 1: In his essay, "Shakespeare Once More" (_Works_, in, pp.
36-42), published in 1868, Mr. Lowell has treated of Shakespeare's style
in a passage of extraordinary felicity and depth of critical judgment.]

I do not mean that things in themselves artificial may not be highly
agreeable. We learn by degrees to take a pleasure in the mannerism of
Gibbon and Johnson. It is something like reading Latin as a living
language. But in both these cases the man is only present by his
thought. It is the force of that, and only that, which distinguishes
them from their imitators, who easily possess themselves of everything
else. But with Burke, who has true style, we have a very different
experience. If we _go_ along with Johnson or Gibbon, we are _carried_
along by Burke. Take the finest specimen of him, for example, "The
Letter to a Noble Lord." The sentences throb with the very pulse of the
writer. As he kindles, the phrase glows and dilates, and we feel
ourselves sharing in that warmth and expansion. At last we no longer
read, we seem to hear him, so livingly is the whole man in what he
writes; and when the spell is over, we can scarce believe that those
dull types could have held such ravishing discourse. And yet we are told
that when Burke spoke in Parliament he always emptied the house.

I know very well what the charm of mere words is. I know very well that
our nerves of sensation adapt themselves, as the wood of the violin is
said to do, to certain modulations, so that we receive them with a
readier sympathy at every repetition. This is a part of the sweet charm
of the classics. We are pleased with things in Horace which we should
not find especially enlivening in Mr. Tupper. Cowper, in one of his
letters, after turning a clever sentence, says, "There! if that had been
written in Latin seventeen centuries ago by Mr. Flaccus, you would have
thought it rather neat." How fully any particular rhythm gets possession
of us