To this
point,--the adaption of style to subject,--he returns, laying down
with clearness and truth the law which should here govern. In a paper
on Schlosser's "Literary History of the Eighteenth Century" he
reaffirms--what cannot be too strongly insisted on--the falsity of the
common opinion that Swift's style is, for all writers, a model of
excellence, showing how it is only fitted to the kind of subjects on
which Swift wrote, and concluding with this characteristic passage:
"That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any time had the
pleasure of conversing upon the subject of style (and pardon me for
saying that men of the most sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz.,
poetry and style, to talk _most_ like blockheads) have invariably
regarded Swift's style not as if _relatively_, (i.e., _given_ a proper
subject), but as if _absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter
what the subject. Now, my friend, suppose the case, that the dean had
been required to write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal
apostrophe to Death, or to many passages in Sir Thomas Brown's
'Religio Medici' and his 'Urn-Burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural
sections of his 'Holy Living and Dying,' do you know what would have
happened? Are you aware what sort of a ridiculous figure your poor
bald Jonathan would have cut? About the same that would be cut by a
forlorn scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if
suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of
Belshazzar the king, before a thousand of his lords.
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