George Saintsbury

“ Thus Shakespeare himself never deserts the Grand Style in the Sonnets, or indeed in any of his poems, except—and then not always—songs in the plays of such a character that grandeur would be almost or wholly out of place. In his plays themselves he suits style to subject, and so alternates Grand Style with that which is not grand. ”

“ The vast region of the lighter vein must be abandoned, or clumsily handled—as it actually is by Milton when his Grand Style is once 'set'. Even in serious subjects, there must be a kind of 'second sifting' of seriousness. And, above all, there is the certainty of the arising of a spurious Grand Style—a style of mere grandiosity—a plaster imitation of the real thing, than which there has been nothing in the past, and there is likely to be nothing in the future, more detestable. ”

“ If we had more early Greek epic—more especially if we had Antimachus—we should be much better judges of the Homeric Grand Style than we are. As it is, we see in it extraordinary and extraordinarily varied melody of verse and phrase, a use of Figure, especially of Simile, which is unsurpassed, and to which indeed all subsequent literary poetry is directly or indirectly indebted; and one great engine, the elaborate and mostly perpetual epithet, which is a great puzzle to cautious and widely experienced critics. For the ancients will not tell us exactly how these epithets affected them ”

“ Whenever this perfection of expression acquires such force that it transmutes the subject and transports the hearer or reader, then and there the Grand Style exists, for so long, and in such a degree, as the transmutation of the one and the transportation of the other lasts. ”

“ The language is quite plain—it is an instance, one of many, which shows that poetic diction is not a sine qua non, though none of these shows that it can be or ought to be wholly dispensed with. But as I am, I confess, strongly and indeed irreconcilably opposed to the doctrine that the great thought ipso facto makes the Great Style—that the meaning is the thing—I am particularly glad to start with an instance where the secret does lie mainly in the meaning. ”

“ We find that there is undoubtedly a prevalent style in Dante: and that this is of a peculiar gravity, the gravest style perhaps in all literature, yet in no sense stiff or stilted, and not (to some tastes) at all affected. But it seems, to some at least, that this style is very largely influenced, and even to some considerable extent produced, by the metre—which is of an intense idiosyncrasy, and though not in the least monotonous, curiously uniform in general atmosphere—much more so indeed than the Greek hexameter, and quite infinitely more so than the English blank verse. ”

“ Milton provides all this, and he is recognized as a grand stylist; Shakespeare does not, and his title is questioned. A respectable but rather futile gentleman like Duke Orsino is plentifully supplied with the noblest phrase; a petulant, dishonourable, almost worthless prince like Richard II is supplied more plentifully still, and from a still nobler mint. He does not grudge it to his villains; if
The wheel is come full circle; I am here [3]
be not in the Grand Style, I confess myself utterly ignorant what the Grand Style is. ”

“ This may seem a fanciful sermon on a more fancifully selected text; but I venture to hope that it may induce some who have not yet thought on the matter to take not uninteresting views of the Grand Style in general and of Shakespeare's Grand Style in particular. They will not find these views easily exhaustible: all the less so because all really Grand Style appeals to a certain complementary gift and faculty in the person who is to appreciate it; it is a sort of infinitely varying tally, which awaits and adjusts itself to an infinite number of counter-pieces. ”

“ But there is most in the whole phrase; though with the contestable exception of 'orient' and perhaps 'Lo!' there is not a single specimen of 'poetic diction' in it; most of it is in the simplest vocabulary; and the central thought and image are as common as grass or earth. But the attitude of the phrase is the thing; the simple dignified attitude which sets off, and is set off by 'orient' and 'gracious' and 'burning', as jewels set off, and are set off by, simplicity and dignity and grace combined in the human port and bearing. ”

“ What is it, in these passages themselves, which, in spite of the evident novitiate of their author, claims for them grandeur of style? It is no one thing; the sources of the Sublime in style are many—as many as the qualities and circumstances of Style itself. Whenever one of these qualities is displayed, whenever one of these circumstances is utilized, in the transmuting and transporting fashion and degree—there is the Grand Style. ”

“ It would, for instance, be exceedingly difficult for the most expert, or the most futile, ingenuity of the commentator to assign an exact reason for the occurrence, where it occurs, of what is perhaps the grandest example of the Grand Style in all literature—the words of Prospero to Ferdinand, when the revels are ended. An excuse is wanted to break off the pretty 'vanity of his art'; to get rid of the lovers ”

“ Anything would do; and the actual pretext is anything or nothing But Shakespeare chooses to accompany it with a 'criticism of life'—and of more than life—so all-embracing, couched in expression of such magnificence, that one knows not where to look for its like as form and matter combined. An ordinary man, if, per impossibile, he could have written it, would have put it at the end ”

“ Milton he cannot be for many reasons, including the fact that he has to go before Milton can come; Dante he does not choose to be; Shakespeare he is. And as being Shakespeare—in order, indeed, to make what we mean by Shakespeare—he uses the Grand Style as his Attendant Spirit. He says to it, 'Come,' and it comes; he says to it, 'Go,' and it goes. It is not his master, as to some extent their styles were the masters both of Dante and of Milton. He does not make it his mistress, as not a few hardly lesser men have done—caressing it ”

“ It is in this that Shakespeare excels all his great competitors in quantity, and differs from all but Dante in quality. In Milton there is always something that is not exactly simple; and in Homer 'perpetual epithets', compound epithets, and the like, interfere to some extent with that ever-varying yet often extraordinarily plain speech which we find in Shakespeare and in Dante. ”

“ They cannot conceive Apollo without the bent bow; they think that the Grand Style is a sort of panoply which the wearer, like some adventurous knights under a vow, must never take off. Once more, I cannot help thinking this is a mistake. 'Homer and the Grand Style' is a subject which would be very interesting, and which I should not be afraid to handle; but it would be quite irrelevant to say much of it here. The Homeric grandeur, whatever it is, is quite different in species from that of Dante and Milton ”

“ It is all the better example. The poet takes, you see, the most ordinary words the actual vocabulary of the phrase is not above even Wordsworthian proof. He takes for figure an equally ordinary antithesis 'baby' and 'giant' though a different writer would probably have spoilt his own farther chances by using 'pygmy' or 'dwarf', instead of 'baby'. And here he gets his first hold on us; for the baby, unlike the dwarf, will grow though whether it will grow to giant size or not, only the Future can tell. ”

“ Nor is the adventurer, however moderate his prowess, quite untried in the kind, at any rate, of the quest. Some years ago, at the request of the Dante Society, I wrote and read a paper, as yet unpublished, on the relation of that great poet to the mysterious entity called the Grand Style; and last year I ventured to deal with Milton in the same way, before the Royal Society of Literature. ”

“ But it is certain that Homer does not wear his Grand Style as a continental officer wears his uniform, while Milton does this to the utmost possible extent, and Dante to an extent extremely great. Shakespeare who is nothing if not English, except that he is also universal is never more English than in his preference for mufti on occasion. ”