The eye in smiles may wander round, Caught by earth's shadows as they fleet, But for the soul no help is found Save Him who made it, meet. What could be more inartistic than the disarrangement of the last two lines? No, the strength of Keble lies in the gentle lucidity of many of his finest poems, never in the arresting force of his epithets, never in intricate and ingenious conceits of language. The real prototypes of Keble in English literature are Gray and Wordsworth. Keble on more than one occasion echoes the stately and majestic cadence of Gray. Could such a stanza as the following have been written without the example of the "Elegy"? Why should we faint and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so Heaven has will'd, we die? Not even the tenderest heart and next our own Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh. And again, from the "Second Sunday after Easter": In outline dim and vast Their fearful shadows cast The giant forms of empires, on their way To ruin: one by one, They tower and they are gone-- Yet in the Prophet's soul the dreams of avarice stay. ......... He watched till morning's ray On lake and meadow lay, And willow-shaded streams, that silent sweep Around the banner'd lines, Where, by their several signs, The desert-wearied tribes in sight of Canaan sleep. These sober, grave stanzas have something of the cadence of _The Bard_. The resemblance to Wordsworth is more general, but it may be said that the tone, the structure, the language of many of Keble's lyrics, the background of Nature in which his thoughts enact their part, the presence of skies and woods and waters, of which he is for ever conscious, for which he is ever grateful, however inaccurately observed and sketched, his innate love of old, traditional, wholesome things, "our peace, our fearful innocence, and pure religion breathing household laws"--all these make Keble a true Wordsworthian. The qualities of style to which I propose to call attention in Keble are--(1) simplicity; (2) propriety; (3) gravity--all three unpopular qualities enough nowadays, and, therefore, perhaps all the more worthy of study. (1) Simplicity, artistic simplicity, is a noble thing, and as rare as it is noble; it must be beyond and above ornateness; anciently, indeed, before literature had begun to knit her infinite combinations, it was more attainable; but now to be unstudied is to be thin. Art must now be "careless with artful care, affecting to be unaffected." Modern simplicity must show the spareness of asceticism, not the leanness of anæmia. It must arise from the repression of luxuriance, not poverty of spirit; strict simplicity implies the rejection of all startling and glittering tricks of style, and consequently it implies a lordly patience in pursuit, with an indefatigable zeal for the selection of the precise, the majestic, the supreme.