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we shall see (and the thing is surely very remarkable) speaks of the quality of eutrapelia in the same disapproving and austere way as the writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The young and noble Jason appears at Iolcos, and being questioned about himself by Pelias, he answers that he has been trained in the nurture and admonition of the old and just Centaur, Chiron. "From his cave I come, from Chariclo and Philyra, his stainless daughters who there nursed me. Lo, these twenty years am I with them, and there hath been found in me neither deed nor word that is not convenient; and now, behold I am come home that I may recover my father's kingdom." The adjective eutrapelos, as it is here used in connexion with two nouns, means exactly a word or deed, in biblical phrase of vain lightness, a word or deed such as is not convenient.

There you have the history of the varying use of the words eutrapelos, eutrapelia. And now see how this varying use gives us a clue to the order and sense, as we say, of all that Greek world, so nearly and wonderfully connected with us, so profoundly interesting for us, so full of precious lessons.

(From A Speech at Eton.)

ENGLISH AND GERMAN POETRY

IF I were asked where English poetry got these three things, its turn for style, its turn for melancholy, and its turn for natural magic, for catching and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully near and vivid way, I should answer with some doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a Celtic source; with less doubt, that it got much of its melancholy from a Celtic source; with no doubt at all, that from a Celtic source it got nearly all its natural magic.

Any German with penetration and tact in matters of literary criticism will own that the principal deficiency of German poetry is in style; that for style, in the highest sense, it shows but little feeling. Take the eminent masters of style, the poets who best give the idea of what the peculiar power which lies in style is,— Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton. An example of the peculiar effect which these poets produce, you can hardly give from German poetry. Examples enough you can give from German poetry of

the effect produced by genius, thought, and feeling expressing themselves in clear language, simple language, passionate language, eloquent language, with harmony and melody; but not of the peculiar effect exercised by eminent power of style. Every reader of Dante can at once call to mind what the peculiar effect I mean is; I spoke of it in my lectures on translating Homer, and there I took an example of it from Dante, who perhaps manifests it more eminently than any other poet. But from Milton, too, one may take examples of it abundantly; compare this from MiltonNor sometimes forget

Those other two, equal with me in fate,--
So were I equall'd with them in renown,-
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides;

with this from Goethe

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt.

Nothing can be better in its way than the style in which Goethe there presents his thought, but it is the style of prose as much as of poetry; it is lucid, harmonious, earnest, eloquent, but it has not received that peculiar kneading, heightening, and recasting which is observable in the style of the passage from Milton, a style which seems to have for its cause a certain pressure of emotion, and an ever-surging, yet bridled excitement in the poet, giving a special intensity to his way of delivering himself. In poetical races and epochs this turn for style is peculiarly observable; and perhaps it is only on condition of having this somewhat heightened and difficult manner, so different from the plain manner of prose, that poetry gets the privilege of being loosed, at its best moments, into that perfectly simple, limpid style, which is the supreme style of all, but the simplicity of which is still not the simplicity of prose. 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 Shakespeare; 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 Shakespeare's. It was a manner much more turbid and strown with blemishes than the manner of Pindar, Dante, or Milton; often it was detestable; but it owed its existence to Shakespeare'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 Shakespeare'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. Goethe with his fine critical perception, saw clearly enough both the power of style in itself, and the lack of style in the literature of his own country; and perhaps if we regard him solely as a German, not as a European, his great work was that he laboured all his life to impart style into German literature, and firmly to establish it there. Hence the immense importance to him of the world of classical art, and of the productions of Greek or Latin genius, where style so eminently manifests its power. Had he found in the German genius and literature an element of style existing by nature and ready to his hand, half his work, one may say, would have been saved him, and he might have done much more in poetry. But as it was, he had to try and create out of his own powers, a style for German poetry, as well as to provide contents for this style to carry, and thus his labour as a poet was doubled.

(From The Study of Celtic Literature.)

VOL. V

3 A

EDWARD FREEMAN

[Edward Augustus Freeman was born at Mitchley Abbey, Staffordshire, on 2nd August 1823, and died at Alicante, on 16th March 1892. From the time when he surrendered his fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, on his marriage in 1847, till his return to the University in 1884 as Regius Professor of History, he passed a retired life in the country and abroad in the pursuit of historical study. The first volume of his largest work, The History of the Norman Conquest, appeared in 1867, and the sixth in 1879. These were supplemented in 1882 by two volumes on William Rufus. His earliest writings were on architectural subjects, probably suggested by the Oxford Movement of his undergraduate days. Architecture continued to be his favourite study to the last, and his application of it and geography in the interpretation of historical fact exerted a strong influence on younger Oxford. His four volumes of Historical Essays contain the best of his contributions to the Reviews and many of his public lectures as Professor of History. The Crimean War turned his attention to the History and Conquest of the Saracens, the American Civil War to Federal Government, and the troubles in the East in 1877 to the Ottoman Power in Europe. In 1872 he published the Growth of the English Constitution, and in the month in which he died appeared the third of the four volumes of his History of Sicily.]

THE reputation of the historian of the Norman Conquest rests rather on his doctrine of history and his method of study than on any outstanding merit of style. He will be remembered as one of the pioneers, perhaps the doughtiest, who discredited alike the piecemeal interpretation and superficial treatment of Hume and Robertson by a vigorous insistence on the Unity of History and on the necessity of accuracy and research. His style shows the effects of this reforming mood: it inspires confidence by its straightforwardness and emphasis, but it is often wearisome in repetition, too didactic to be artistic, and too accurate to be suggestive.

In all his work he is essentially analytic, just as, by curious contrast, his predecessors, who had no thought of the Unity of History, were nothing if not synthetic. At times he reaches to

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