In all consideration of the past we find ourselves securely guided by the test of technical excellence. Nothing else has preserved the principal writers of antiquity in esteem. Mr. Lowell called style "the great antiseptic"; good writing, in other words, is the only chemical product which can prevent literature from corrupting and fading away. In the days of Shakespeare there were a dozen writers who had a just right to consider themselves more "serious seekers after truth" than the playwright of Stratford, for they discussed graver subjects and brought forward a weightier array of facts. Their very names are now forgotten, while his pages grow more brilliantly vital as the years pass on. The fancy and tenderness of Shakespeare, the wit of Molière, the sublimity of Milton, the wisdom of Goethe, are revealed to us and preserved for us by their style, and without it would have sunk long ago in the ocean of oblivion. Such phrases as "the matter is the important thing, not the manner," "never mind how he says it, but find out what he has to say"--which are common enough on the tongues and pens of those who have secured no grace of delivery--are pure fallacies. Style is the atmosphere without which what is written cannot continue to breathe; it is the indispensable medium for rendering what a man has got to say continuously audible to the world. These are truths which we might suppose too obvious to need repetition, since the whole history of literature proclaims them, yet so great is the natural love of slovenly writing and vague thinking that this heresy about the matter being far more important than the manner is incessantly recurring. It is needful, once more, therefore, to say as plainly as possible that without a distinguished and appropriate manner, that is to say, without style, no "matter" will ever have the chance to reach posterity. If once we resign this position as to the pre-eminent importance of style we lose all means of measuring the standards of literature. As long as excellence in writing is recognized as the main factor in the formation of judgment, we are not likely to go very far wrong. We have seen that those who permit themselves no other lamp than this may differ as to the relative value of figures in a single group, but they unite in their appreciation of that group itself. This is the case in the criticism of ancient writers, and what other means have we of forming a judgment about the moderns? As long as we are content to measure them as we do their noble predecessors, we may make mistakes, but they will be mistakes, not of principle, but only of detail. The moment that we allow ourselves to believe that modern writing, the authorship of to-day, is distinct in kind from that of the old masters, and can be measured by different standards, we have resigned ourselves to a heresy, and are in imminent peril of encouraging literary anarchy.