THE POETIC STYLE.

Examples.

Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in a taking shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it constant as the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no hopeless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge and never-fading flush and neverhushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet blue, gentian blue, peacock blue, river-of-paradise bluę, glass of a painted window melted in the sun and the witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever from her snow.-Ruskin's " Praeterita."

My dream expanded and moved forward. I trod again the dust of Posilipo, soft as the feathers in the wings of Sleep. I emerged on Baia; I crossed her innumerable arches; I loitered in the breezy sunshine of her mole; I trusted the faithful seclusion of her caverns, the keepers of so many secrets; and I reposed on the buoyancy of her tepid sea. Then Naples and her theatres and her churches, and grottoes and

dells and forts and promontories rushed forward in confusion, now among soft whispers, now among sweetest sounds, and subsided and sank and disappeared. Yet a memory seemed to come fresh from every one; each had time enough for its tale, for its pleasure, for its reflection, for its pang. As I mounted with silent steps the narrow staircase of the old palace, how distinctly did I feel against the palm of my hand the coldness of that smooth stone-work.-Landor's "Pentameron."

The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had traveled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and fallen monarch. Still, however, his dying splendor gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapors, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers; some, touched with gold; some, with purple; some, with a hue of deep and dark red. Nearer to the beach, the tide rippled around in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand.-Sir Walter Scott's "Antiquary."

But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the ruffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of mid-day, but, also, with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. The wooden houses, with their jutting

stones and quaint gable-peaks; the door-steps and thresholds, with the early grass springing up about them; the gardenplots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn and, even in the market-place, margined with green on either side-all were visible.-Hawthorne's" Scarlet Letter."

CHAPTER VII.

STYLE AND SATIRE.

(The Satirical Style.)

HISTORICALLY, satire is an old Roman or Latin form, in its origin, and may be said to have had its first embodiment in the writings of Ennius, 240 B. C.-190 B. C. Still more accurately, it assumed, for the first time, its more distinctive and modern character in the works of Lucilius, 148 B. C.-103 B. C. It was Lucilius who first wrote of men and manners in that peculiar strain now common to satire, and established it on a literary basis, from which it has not materially departed. After a period of nearly half a century, the great satirist of the Augustan age arose, 65 B. C.-8 B. C., in the person of Horace, author of no less than thirty distinct satires, in addition to numerous compositions more or less satirical.

Passing over to the Christian era, 34-62 A. D., Persius appears, author of several satires, and connected, in Latin literary history, with his successor and superior, the renowned Juvenal. The date

of Juvenal's birth is in doubt, but he lived, as we know, in the reigns of Nero, Domitian and Hadrian, in the latter part of the first and the opening of the second century of the Christian era. Of the sixteen satires of Juvenal and his well-deserved celebrity in this particular sphere, it is needless here to speak. Martial, the epigrammatist, born in Spain, 43 A. D., but residing at Rome, 66 A. D., is properly included in this historical sketch. Lucian, also, a great classic satirist, born at Samosata, Syria, at the opening of the second century, 130 A. D., and living till its close, is also included.

In his way and time, no author of Greece or Rome wielded a more varied pen. Whether in criticism, biography, poetry or miscellany, he was always satirical. Especially in his romance of "The Two Histories," and in his "Dialogues," such as, "The Sale of Lives;" "Dialogues of the Gods;" "Timon the Misanthrope;" "Dialogues of the Dead," and others, sarcasm and humor are SO combined as to give pungency and spirit through

out.

Pietists and philosophers were the most frequent targets for the shafts of his ridicule and contempt, or, as Froude expresses it, "the abominations of paganism and the cant of the popular philosophers." He loved nothing better than to impale upon the point of his satire either some notorious theory or personage of the time, until each one saw it as he saw it. He was the Juvenal of his age and nation, a kind of compound of Swift and Vol