low them, and
comes nearer to the moderns. In his chief works, besides what he has
of his own, he has the elementary soundness of the ancients; he has
their important action and their large and broad manner: but he has
not their purity of method. He is therefore a less safe model; for
what he has of his own is personal, and inseparable from his own rich
nature; it may be imitated and exaggerated, it cannot be learned or
applied as an art; he is above all suggestive; more valuable,
therefore, to young writers as men than as artists. But clearness of
arrangement, rigour of development, simplicity of style--these may to
a certain extent be learned: and these may, I am convinced, be learned
best from the ancients, who, although infinitely less suggestive than
Shakespeare, are thus, to the artist, more instructive.

What then, it will be asked, are the ancients to be our sole models?
the ancients with their comparatively narrow range of experience, and
their widely different circumstances? Not, certainly, that which is
narrow in the ancients, nor that in which we can no longer sympathize.
An action like the action of the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, which turns
upon the conflict between the heroine's duty to her brother's corpse
and that to the laws of her country, is no longer one in which it is
possible that we should feel a deep interest. I am speaking too, it
will be remembered, not of the best sources of intellectual stimulus
for the general reader, but of the best models of instruction for the
individual writer. This last may certainly learn of the ancients,
better than anywhere else, three things which it is vitally important
for him to know:--the all-importance of the choice of a subject; the
necessity of accurate construction; and the subordinate character of
expression. He will learn from them how unspeakably superior is the
effect of the one moral impression left by a great action treated as a
whole, to the effect produced by the most striking single thought or
by the happiest image. As he penetrates into the spirit of the great
classical works, as he becomes gradually aware of their intense
significance, their noble simplicity, and their calm pathos, he will
be convinced that it is this effect, unity and profoundness of moral
impression, at which the ancient Poets aimed; that it is this which
constitutes the grandeur of their works, and which makes them
immortal. He will desire to direct his own efforts towards produ