The style, or, to borrow an expression from Swift, what the poverty of our language compels us to call the style, in which this book is written, is on a par with its criticism. We will give a few examples. “It is a proof of the greatness of Dryden that he knew Milton for a poet; it is a proof of the smallness (and mighty as he was on some sides, on others he was very small) of Milton that (if he really did so) he denied poetry to Dryden.”[16] “What the _Voyage and Travaile_ really is, is this--it is, so far as we know, and even beyond our knowledge in all probability and likelihood, the first considerable example of prose in English dealing neither with the beaten track of theology and philosophy, nor with the, even in the Middle Ages, restricted field of history and home topography, but expatiating freely on unguarded plains and on untrodden hills, sometimes dropping into actual prose romance and always treating its subject as the poets had treated theirs in _Brut_ and _Mort d’Arthur_, in _Troy-book_ and _Alexandreid_, as a mere canvas on which to embroider flowers of fancy.”[17] Again, “With Anglo-Saxon history he deals slightly, and despite his ardent English patriotism--his book opens with a vigorous panegyric of England, the first of a series extending to the present day (from which an anthology _De Laudibus Angliæ_ might be made)--he deals very harshly with Harold Godwinson.”[18] “He had a fit of stiff Odes in the Gray and Collins manner.” “_The Hind and Panther_ (the greatest poem ever written in the teeth of its subject)”. “His voluminous Latin works have been _tackled_ by a special Wyclif Society.” These are a few of the gems in which every chapter abounds.