h excellent
institutes, him in the first place, above others, I should esteem
worthy of all honour. But next to him the man who strives to establish
in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing
received from a good age of the nation, and, as it were, to fortify
the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to overleap which let a
law only short of that of Romulus be used to prevent.... The one, as I
believe, supplies noble courage and intrepid counsels against an
enemy invading the territory. The other takes to himself the task of
extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned detective police of
ears, and a light band of good authors, that barbarism which makes
large inroads upon the minds of men, and is a destructive intestine
enemy of genius. Nor is it to be considered of small consequence what
language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary
degree of propriety in speaking it.... For, let the words of a country
be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by
wear and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare, but, by no light
indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent,
idly-yawning race, with minds already long prepared for any amount of
servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any
state, did not at least flourish in a middling degree as long as its
own liking and care for its language lasted."[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter to Bonmattei, from Florence, 1638.]

The probabilities are that we are now coming to an epoch of a quieter
style. There have been in our generation three strong masters in the
aft of prose writing. There was, first of all, Carlyle, there was
Macaulay, and there is Mr. Raskin. These are all giants, and they have
the rights of giants. But I do not believe that a greater misfortune
can befall the students who attend classes here, than that they should
strive to write like any one of these three illustrious men. I think
it is the worst thing that can happen to them. They can never attain
to the high mark which they have set before themselves. It Is not
everybody who can bend the bow of Ulysses, and most men only do
themselves a mischief by trying to bend it. If we are now on our way
to a quieter style, I am not sorry for it. Truth is quiet. Milton's
phrase ever lingers in our minds as one of imperishable beauty--where
he regrets that he is drawn by I know not what, from beholding the
bright cou