It is a curious thing, however, that the more we try to account for the miracles of genius, the more miraculous they grow. We can never hope to understand the secret of Homer’s style. It is best to agree simply with Mr. Pater: “Homer was always saying things in this manner.” We can never know how Keats came to write,
“With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,”
or those other lines, perhaps the most beautiful in our language,
“Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
It is all a mystery, hidden from the uninspired, and Mr. Lowell’s clean-built scaffolding, while it helps us to a comprehensive enjoyment of Shakespeare, leaves us dumb and amazed as ever before the concentrated splendor of a single line,—
“In cradle of the rude, imperious surge.”
There is only one way to fathom its conception. The great waves reared their foamy heads, and whispered him the words.
The richness of Elizabethan English, the freedom and delight with which men sounded and explored the charming intricacies of a tongue that was expanding daily into fresh majesty and beauty, must have given to literature some of the allurements of navigation. Mariners sailed away upon stormy seas, on strange, half-hinted errands; haunted by the shadow of glory, dazzled by the lustre of wealth. Scholars ventured far upon the unknown ocean of letters; haunted by the seductions of prose, dazzled by the fairness of verse. They brought back curious spoils, gaudy, subtle, sumptuous, according to the taste or potency of the discoverer. Their words have often a mingled weight and sweetness, whether conveying briefly a single thought, like Burton’s “touched with the loadstone of love,” or adding strength and lustre to the ample delineations of Ben Jonson. “Give me that wit whom praise excites, glory puts on, or disgrace grieves; he is to be nourished with ambition, pricked forward with honors, checked with reprehension, and never to be suspected of sloth.” Bacon’s admirable conciseness, in which nothing is disregarded, but where every word carries its proper value and expresses its exact significance, is equaled only by Cardinal Newman. “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and study an exact man,” says Bacon; and this simple accuracy of definition reminds us inevitably of the lucid terseness with which every sentence of the “Apologia” reveals the thought it holds. “The truest expedience is to answer right out when you are asked; the wisest economy is to have no management; the best prudence is not to be a coward.” As for the naïveté and the picturesqueness which lend such inexpressible charm to the earlier writers and atone for so many of their misdeeds, what can be more agreeable than to hear Sir Walter Raleigh remark with cheerful ingenuousness, “Some of our captaines garoused of wine till they were reasonable pleasant”!—a most engaging way of narrating a not altogether uncommon occurrence. And what can be more winning to the ear than the simple grace with which Roger Ascham writes of familiar things: “In the whole year, Springtime, Summer, Fall of the Leaf, and Winter; and in one day, Morning, Noontime, Afternoon, and Eventide, altereth the course of the weather, the pith of the bow, the strength of the man”! It seems an easy thing to say “fall of the leaf” for fall, and “eventide” for evening, but in such easy things lies the subtle beauty of language; in the rejection of such nice distinctions lies the barrenness of common speech. We can hardly spare the time, in these hurried days, to speak of the fall of the leaf, to use four words where one would suffice, merely because the four words have a graceful significance, and the one word has none; and so, even in composition, this finely colored phrase, with its hint of russet, wind-swept woods, is lost to us forever. Yet compare with it the line which Lord Tennyson, that great master of beautiful words, puts into Marian’s song:—
“‘Have you still any honey, my dear?’