The main qualification for such a style was plain good sense, natural feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in the putting together of sentences so as to avoid mechanical awkwardness of construction, but above all, the advantage of a _subject_ such in its nature as instinctively to reject ornament lest it should draw attention from itself. Such subjects are common; but grand impassioned subjects insist upon a different treatment; and there it is that the true difficulties of style commence, and there it is that your worshipful Master Jonathan would have broken down irrecoverably. This “fine analysis” of Swift’s style does not appear to me to be anything more than a powerful attack delivered by an apostle of the opposing school. Swift and de Quincey are obviously poles apart in the direction of their style, and I have no doubt that I could find in Swift as severe an analysis of de Quincey as my correspondent has found in de Quincey of Swift. At bottom the controversy carries us back to the very foundations of European culture. On the whole, Swift followed the Greek tradition—exemplified by Demosthenes—while de Quincey followed the Latin—exemplified by Cicero. There can be no doubt of the school to which Swift belonged; his _Drapier’s Letters_, for instance, were confessedly modelled on Demosthenes. Likewise there can be no doubt of the school which de Quincey attended; he learned his style of Cicero. The question, however, is one of taste, by no means a matter of _non est disputandum_. Which of the two schools of style is capable of the highest absolute development; and, above all, which is the most suited to the English language? My mind is fully made up; I am for the Greek and Demosthenes against the Latin and Cicero. I am for Swift against de Quincey; for the simple against the ornate.