"On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the beauty of fair Greece,
And the grandeur of old Rome."
In this case the concluding couplet is cheap and commonplace—"fair Greece" and "old Rome" being anemic expressions unfit to live. Poe amended it to read:
"To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome."
Miracle of Art! This is not a change, but an apotheosis. We now have two lines which lay before us in gorgeous perfection a picture of the past; two lines as splendid as they were sickly, as magnificent as formerly they were mediocre. Yet the idea is the same in both cases. What then is it which makes so much difference? It is the manner of expression—it is style—it is art.
There is no reason why one man should be a stylist and another should not, but so it is. Huxley was a stylist; Darwin was not; Herzen, yes; Kropotkin, no.