The Victorian literature presents a dozen styles, every man speaking out what is in him, in the phrases he likes best. Our _Zeit-Geist_ flashes all across the heavens at once. Let us place a page from _Sartor Resartus_ beside a page from Macaulay's _History of England_, or either beside a page from Arnold's _Literature and Dogma_ or one from the _Stones of Venice_. Here are four typical styles in prose, each of which has been much admired and imitated; yet they differ as widely as Shelley from Ovid, or Tennyson from Pope. Again, for verse, contrast _Paracelsus_ with _The Princess_--poems written about the same time by friends and colleagues. Compare a poem of William Morris with one by Lewis Morris. Compare Swinburne's _Songs and Sonnets_ with Matthew Arnold's _Obermann_; Rudyard Kipling's _Ballads_ with _The Light of Asia_. Have they any common standard of form, any type of metre? The purists doubt as to the style of Carlyle as a "model," but no one denies that the _French Revolution_ and _Hero-Worship_, at least in certain passages, display a mastery over language as splendid as anything in our prose literature. Exactly the same might be said also of _Esmond_, and again of _Silas Marner_, and again of the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_. Yet all of these differ as widely as one style can differ from another. _Fifine at the Fair_, and _The Angel in the House_, have each fervent admirers. No! there is no recognised "model" either in verse or in prose. In truth, we have now both in prose and in verse strongly-contrasted types, each of which commands admiration and following. Both in prose and verse we have one type which has carried subtle finish and a purism studied almost to the point of "preciousness," alongside of another type which crowds its effects without regard to tone and harmony, and by its side a third type which trots along breathless in its shirt-sleeves. Tennyson's _In Memoriam_ has that exquisite polish of workmanship which we find in such poets as Virgil, Racine, and Milton--that perfection of phrase which we cannot conceive the poet capable of improving by any labour. Put aside for the moment any question about the ideas, inspiration, or power of the poem as a whole, and consider that, in all those hundreds of stanzas, there is hardly one line that is either careless, prosaic, or harsh, not a single false note, nothing commonplace, nothing over-coloured, but uniform harmony of phrase. This perfection of phrasing is not always to be found even in the greatest poets, for Aeschylus and Dante at times strike a fierce discord, and Shakespeare, Calderon, and Goethe sometimes pass into rank extravaganza. But this scholarly and measured speech has impressed itself on the poetry of our time--insomuch, that the Tennysonian cycle of minor poets has a higher standard of grace, precision, and subtlety of phrase than the second rank of any modern literature:--a standard