A distinct, exact writer may be perspicuous; but, as we have said, he runs a risk of not being so. When a writer is scrupulously anxious that his readers understand every detail exactly as he conceives it, there is a danger that he put too severe a strain upon them, and confuse their comprehension of the general aspect of his theme. De Quincey is an example of a writer at once exact and perspicuous; and the secret is, that he is aware of his danger, and frequently presses upon his reader a general view of what he is doing. When Precision and simplicity are in a measure antagonistic. Socrates began to cross-examine the people of Athens, he found that they could not define the meaning of words that they were using every day. They used language in a loose way for purposes of social intercourse, and did not trouble themselves to be rigidly exact. The case is not much altered among us. writer cannot but be abstruse to the generality. A very exact EMOTIONAL QUALITIES OF STYLE-STRENGTH, PATHOS, THE LUDICROUS. The emotional qualities of style are not so difficult to distinguish as the intellectual qualities. Had Campbell not been needlessly anxious to isolate the style from the subject-matter, he would never have thought of huddling together all the emotional qualities under the name of vivacity.1 There are three broadly distinguished emotional qualities-strength, pathos, and the ludicrous; and each of these is a general name for distinct varieties. Under the general name of Strength are embraced such varieties as animation, vivacity, liveliness, rapidity, brilliancy; nerve, vigour, force, energy, fervour; dignity, stateliness, splendour, grandeur, magnificence, loftiness, sublimity. Between the extremes in the list-animation and sublimity— there is a wide difference; yet sublimity is more appropriately classed with animation than with any mode of pathos. So with rapidity and dignity. The contrast between strength and pathos is as the contrast between motion and rest. The effect of a calm, sustained motion is nearer to the effect of absolute repose than it is to the effect of a restless, rapid, abrupt motion; yet the calm, sustained motion is considered as a state of motion, and not as a state of rest. In like manner, an overpowering sense of sublimity approaches nearer to a sense of depression and melancholy than it does to animation or vivacity; yet it is essentially a mode of strength, and not a mode of pathos. 1 Longinus's celebrated treatise repi yovs, mistranslated "On the Sublime t through the Latin De Sublimitate, falls into the same excess of abstraction. Hypsos, according to De Quincey, means everything tending to elevate composition above commonplace. In the above list I have attempted some kind of subordinate division, throwing together the terms that seem more nearly synonymous. It would not be possible to define them exactly without incurring the charge of making one's own feelings the standard for all men. The terms are used with considerable latitude, partly because few people take the trouble to weigh their words, but partly also because different men have different ideals of animation, different ideals of energy, different ideals of sublimity. All can understand, upon due reflection, the common bond between these qualities their common difference from the qualities comprehended under pathos; but no amount of explanation can give two men of different character the same ideas of animation, energy, dignity, or sublimity. The utmost that explanation can do is to disabuse their minds of the idea that the one is wrong and the other right, and to persuade them that they are simply at variance. At the same time, the application of the terms is not absolutely chaotic. Take the universal suffrage, and you find a considerable body of substantial agreement between the loose borders. One great cause of the licentious abuse of these terms is the desire of admirers to credit their favourites with every excellence of style. Could we subtract all the abuses committed under this impulse, we should find the popular applications of terms very much at one. All agree in describing Macaulay as animated, rapid, and brilliant. There is not so much unanimity in accrediting him with dignity-at least with dignity of the highest degree; and he is seldom credited with sublimity. Readers would probably be no less unanimous in calling Jeremy Taylor fervid, Dryden energetic, Temple dignified, Defoe nervous, Johnson vigorous, Burke splendid, and De Quincey's "prose fantasies" sublime. Perhaps none of the above words are so shifting in their application as the word sublimity. In an account of De Quincey's character I have tried to distinguish two opposite modes of sublimity. No critical term is more in need of definition. De Quincey denies it of Homer, and ascribes it in the highest degree to Milton, seeming to understand by it the exhibiting of vast power to adoring contemplation. Pathos is contrasted with the sentiment of power, and is said to be "allied to inaction, repose, and the passive side of our nature." According to this definition, whatever excites or agitates is not pathetic. This distinction, like every attempt at analysis of mental states, is open to endless dispute. It will be almost unanimously allowed as regards tender feelings awakened by the representation of vlläe jects of special affection, displays of active goodness, hum: terms timents, and gentle pleasures." But it may stagger m applied to the representations of pain and misery. Are these not agitating and are they not justly called pathetic? To answer all conceivable difficulties in the way of understanding the above definition of pathos would be hopeless within our present limits. It may remove some difficulties to remind the reader that we have here to do not with tender feeling as awakened by actual objects, but with tender feeling as awakened by verbal representations. Pathos, as here discussed, is the quality of a style that awakens tender feelings-not another name for tender feeling as it arises in actual life. I do not mean that the feelings arising from these two sources differ otherwise than in degree; I mean only that the reality is usually more agitating than the verbal representation. The report of a railway accident may be read with a certain luxurious horror by a delicate person, whom the actual sight would throw into fits. But still the question returns, Are not verbal representations of pain and misery often agitating? The answer to this question is, that not every representation of pain and misery is pathetic. To speak technically, there are two different uses of painful scenes in composition-the description of misery is adapted to two distinct ends. These may be defined, with sufficient accuracy, as the persuasive end and the poetic end. When a writer or a speaker wishes, by a painful description or a painful story, to persuade to a course of action, he dwells upon the particulars that agitate and excite. A pleader wishing to excite pity for his client, so as to procure acquittal, dwells upon the harrowing side of the case-the destitution of the man's family, and suchlike. He does not cater for the pleasure of the jurors, but does his best to make them uncomfortable. So the preacher of a charity sermon, if he wishes to draw contributions from his audience, must not throw a sentimental halo over the miseries of the poor, but must drag into prominence hunger, dirt, and nakedness, in their most repulsive aspects, horrifying his hearers with pictures that haunt them until they have done their utmost to relieve the sufferers. Very different is the end of the poet. His object is to throw his reader into a pleasing melancholy. He withholds from his picture of distress all disgusting and exciting circumstances, reconciles us to the pain by dwelling upon its alleviations, represents misery as the inevitable lot of man, exhibits the authors of misery as visited with condign punishment, expresses impassioned sympathy with the unfortunate victims. By some artifice or other-I have mentioned only a few for illustration-he contrives to make us acquiesce in the existence of the misery represented. He has failed in his end if he leaves us dissatisfied and uncomfortable, because the misery was not relieved or cannot be relieved now. If we are not reconciled to the ex istence of the misery, disposed simply to mourn over it and be content, the composition is not pathetic, but painful. For this luxurious treatment of painful things the poet is often heavily censured by the preacher. Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey' was reprobated by Robert Hall; and in our own day we are familiar with Carlyle's denunciation of "whining, puling, sickly sentimentality." To this distinction between the painful end of persuasion and the pathetic end of poetry, we may add a little by way of anticipating the more obvious objections. It will be said that a preacher's object is to persuade people to action, and yet that sermons are often called pathetic. This fact need not disturb our definition. For, 1o, While it is one of a preacher's objects to persuade to action, it is not his only object : the pulpit has also a function of consolation-and consolation, the reconciling of people to their miseries, is by our definition essentially pathetic. 2, Supposing a sermon admirably adapted to set beneficence in motion-supposing it to present a picture of most harrowing distress-the hearers cannot take measures for relief at once; and meantime, if not so excited as to be thoroughly uncomfortable, they may indulge in pathetic dreams of the relief that they intend to give. 3, The effect of a composition depends very much upon the recipient-a tale of woe that makes one man uncomfortable for days, may supply another with a luxurious feast of mournful sentiment. It is chiefly this last consideration that makes the application of the term pathos shifting-that causes the difficulty of drawing any "objective" line between pathos and horror. Few persons skilled in analysing their feelings would object to the above definition of pathos, but there would be considerable difference of opinion as to what is agitating or horrible and what is truly pathetic. Again, it may be said that a tragic poem is agitating, and yet that it is pathetic. To which we answer that in a tragedy, while isolated scenes are tempestuously agitating, the effect may yet be pathetic on the whole. Tragedy "purifies the mind by pity and terror;" the atmosphere is shaken with tempests, only to subside at the end into a purer and more perfect calm. Painful incidents, thrilling transports of grief, keep alive our interest in the plot : we do not see the pathetic side of these painful representations till we look back upon them from the repose of the conclusion. I need not dwell on the terms for varieties of the Ludicrous. The only nicety is the distinction between wit and humour. Much has been written on this distinction. One can see, from the examples quoted, that critics are very much at one, though they generally fail in definition, owing to the vagueness of their psychological language. Professor Bain's theory is that humour. is simply the laughable degradation of an object without malice, in a genial, kindly, good-natured way; and that wit is "an ingenious and unexpected play upon words." The two qualities are not opposed, not incompatible. A good deal of the confusion about them has arisen from viewing them as two contrasted and inconsistent qualities. Wit may be humorous, or it may be derisive, malicious. I have somewhere seen it laid down that humour "involves an element of the subjective." When we call a writer humorous, we have regard to the spirit of his ludicrous degradation; we imply that he is good-natured—that he bears no malice. When we call a writer witty, we have regard simply to the cleverness of his expression; he may be sarcastic, like Swift -or humorous, like Steele. The proper antithesis to humour is satire: wit is common to both. Such is the true definition of humour, but in the actual application there may be as much inconstancy as in the application of the term pathos, and from the same reason. What appears kindly and good-natured to one man, may not appear so to another. Addison is generally classed among the humorists; yet only the other day his kindliness was described as an affectation put on to sharpen the sting of his ridicule. Johnson spoke of his "malevolent wit and humorous sarcasm ;" and the present writer believes that it would be difficult to find, among all Addison's papers, half-a-dozen in which the wit may not fairly be characterised as malicious. He is a humorist to us, but he could hardly have appeared a humorist to his victims. There is another cause of difference among critics as respects particular compositions. A reader may refuse to acknowledge a degradation, however comical. He may view an object too seriously to allow that it should be trifled with. A recent critic professes himself blind to the humour of De Quincey, and sees in his playful liberties with distinguished names nothing but frivolous impertinence. In all such cases, as De Quincey himself says, "not to sympathise is not to understand." ELEGANCIES OF STYLE—MELODY, HARMONY, TASTE. "In the harmony of periods," says Blair, "two things may be considered. First, agreeable sound, or modulation in general without any particular expression. Next, the sound so ordered as to become expressive of the sense." Instead of expressing qualities so different by a single term, it is better to provide a term for each. In accordance with the acceptation of melody and harmony in the vocabulary of music, we may describe "agreeable sound or modulation in general" as |