“_Shakespeare and Milton._” The tongue of England, that which myriads Have spoken and will speak, were paralysed Hereafter, but two mighty men stand forth Above the flight of ages, two alone; One crying out, _All nations spoke thro’ me_. The other: True; and thro’ this trumpet burst God’s word; the fall of Angels, and the doom First of immortal, then of mortal, Man, Glory! be glory! not to me, to God. _The Lost Fruit off an old Tree._ No. LVII. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 1858 (1801-1890) A great author, gentlemen, is not one who merely has a _copia verborum_, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling sentences; but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it. I do not claim for him, as such, any great depth of thought, or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human nature, or experience of human life, though these additional gifts he may have, and the more he has of them the greater he is; but I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense the faculty of Expression. He is master of the twofold Logos, the thought and the word, distinct, but inseparable from each other. He may, if so be, elaborate his compositions, or he may pour out his improvisations, but in either case he has but one aim, which he keeps steadily before him, and is conscientious and single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is to give forth what he has within him; and from his very earnestness it comes to pass that, whatever be the splendour of his diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. Whatever be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet, “nil molitur _inepte_.” If he is an orator, then too he speaks, not only “distincte” and “splendide,” but also “apte.” His page is the lucid mirror of his mind and life: “Quo fit, ut omnis Votivâ pateat veluti descripta labellâ Vita senis.”