The simplicity of Menander's style is the simplicity of prose, and is
the same kind of simplicity as that which Goethe's style, in the
passage I have quoted, exhibits; but Menander does not belong to a
great poetical moment, he comes too late for it; it is the simple
passages in poets like Pindar or Dante which are perfect, being
masterpieces of POETICAL simplicity. One may say the same of the
simple passages in Shakspeare; they are perfect, their simplicity
being a POETICAL simplicity. They are the golden, easeful, crowning
moments of a manner which is always pitched in another key from that
of prose; a manner changed and heightened; the Elizabethan style,
regnant in most of our dramatic poetry to this day, is mainly the
continuation of this manner of Shakspeare's. It was a manner much
more turbid and strewn with blemishes than the manner of Pindar,
Dante, or Milton; often it was detestable; but it owed its existence
to Shakspeare's instinctive impulse towards STYLE in poetry, to his
native sense of the necessity for it; and without the basis of style
everywhere, faulty though it may in some places be, we should not
have had the beauty of expression, unsurpassable for effectiveness
and charm, which is reached in Shakspeare's best passages. The turn
for style is perceptible all through English poetry, proving, to my
mind, the genuine poetical gift of the race; this turn imparts to our
poetry a stamp of high distinction, and sometimes it doubles the
force of a poet not by nature of the very highest order, such as
Gray, and raises him to a rank beyond what his natural richness and
power seem to promise.
Pages:
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135