ced and nerved, and if
they spoke out the truth, would have only to say, 'We have seen the
horizon line'; if they were let alone indeed, they would gaze on it
hour after hour, so great to them is the fascination, so full the
sustaining calm, which they gain from that union of form and
greatness. To a very inferior extent, but still, perhaps, to an extent
which most people understand better, a common arch will have the same
effect. A bridge completes a river landscape; if of the old and
many-arched sort it regulates by a long series of defined forms the
vague outline of wood and river which before had nothing to measure
it; if of the new scientific sort it introduces still more strictly a
geometrical element; it stiffens the scenery which was before too
soft, too delicate, too vegetable. Just such is the effect of pure
style in literary art. It calms by conciseness; while the ornate style
leaves on the mind a mist of beauty, an excess of fascination, a
complication of charm, the pure style leaves behind it the simple,
defined, measured idea, as it is, and by itself. That which is chaste
chastens; there is a poised energy--a state half thrill, and half
tranquillity--which pure art gives, which no other can give; a
pleasure justified as well as felt; an ennobled satisfaction at what
ought to satisfy us, and must ennoble us.

Ornate art is to pure art what a painted statue is to an unpainted. It
is impossible to deny that a touch of colour _does_ bring out certain
parts, does convey certain expressions, does heighten certain
features, but it leaves on the work as a whole, a want, as we say,
'of something'; a want of that inseparable chasteness which clings to
simple sculpture, an impairing predominance of alluring details which
impairs our satisfaction with our own satisfaction; which makes us
doubt whether a higher being than ourselves will be satisfied even
though we are so. In the very same manner, though the _rouge_ of
ornate literature excites our eye, it also impairs our confidence.

Mr. Arnold has justly observed that this self-justifying,
self-_proving_ purity of style, is commoner in ancient literature than
in modern literature, and also that Shakespeare is not a great or an
unmixed example of it. No one can say that he is. His works are full
of undergrowth, are full of complexity, are not models of style;
except by a miracle nothing in the Elizabethan age could be a model of
style; the restraining taste of that