To darken counsel with words is a common occurrence. Words are like lenses,--they must be arranged in just such a way, or they hinder rather than help the vision. When the adjustment is as it should be, the lens itself is invisible; and language in the hands of the master is as transparent. Some of the more recent British poets affect the archaic, the quaint, the eccentric, in language, so that one’s attention is almost entirely occupied with their words. Reading them is like trying to look through a pair of spectacles too old or too young for you, or with lenses of different focus. But has not style a value in and of itself? As in the case of light, its value is in the revelation it makes. Its value is to conceal itself, to lose itself in the matter. If humility, or self-denial, or any of the virtues becomes conscious of itself and claims credit for its own sake, does it not that moment fall from grace? What incomparable style in the passage I have quoted from Whitman when we come to think of it, but how it effaces itself and is of no account for the sake of the idea it serves! The more a writer’s style humbles itself, the more it is exalted. There is nothing true in religion that is not equally true in art. Give yourself entirely. All selfish and secondary ends are of the devil. Our Calvinistic grandfathers, who fancied themselves willing to be damned for the glory of God, illustrate the devotion of the true artist to his ideal. “Consider the lilies of the field, ... they toil not, neither do they spin.” The style of the born poet or artist takes as little thought of itself, and is the spontaneous expression of the same indwelling grace and necessity. III