in as short a space as possible,
with as much perfection as possible, the delineation of the type of
character common at all times, dangerous in many times, sure to come
to the surface in moments of difficulty, and never more dangerous than
then. As Milton describes, it is one among several _typical_
characters which will ever have their place in great councils, which
will ever be heard at important decisions, which are part of the
characteristic and inalienable whole of this statesmanlike world. The
debate in Pandaemonium is a debate among these typical characters at
the greatest conceivable crisis, and with adjuncts of solemnity which
no other situation could rival. It is the greatest _classical_
triumph, the highest achievement of the pure _style_ in English
literature; it is the greatest description of the highest and most
typical characters with the most choice circumstances and in the
fewest words.

It is not unremarkable that we should find in Milton and in _Paradise
Lost_ the best specimen of pure style. He was schoolmaster in a
pedantic age, and there is nothing so unclassical--nothing so impure
in style--as pedantry. The out-of-door conversational life of Athens
was as opposed to bookish scholasticism as a life can be. The most
perfect books have been written not by those who thought much of
books, but by those who thought little, by those who were under the
restraint of a sensitive talking world, to which books had contributed
something, and a various eager life the rest. Milton is generally
unclassical in spirit where he is learned, and naturally, because the
purest poets do not overlay their conceptions with book knowledge, and
the classical poets, having in comparison no books, were under little
temptation to impair the purity of their style by the accumulation of
their research. Over and above this, there is in Milton, and a little
in Wordsworth also, one defect which is in the highest degree faulty
and unclassical, which mars the effect and impairs the perfection of
the pure style. There is a want of _spontaneity_, and a sense of
effort. It has been happily said that Plato's words must have _grown_
into their places. No one would say so of Milton or even of
Wordsworth. About both of them there is a taint of duty; a vicious
sense of the good man's task. Things seem right where they are, but
they seem to be put where they are. _Flexibility_ is essential to the
consummate perfection of the pure style becau