I cannot but remember such things were
That were most precious to me?

The thought, the diction, the syntax, might all occur in prose.  Yet when once the stamp of poetry has been put upon a cry that is as old as humanity, prose desists from rivalry, and is content to quote.  Some of the greatest prose-writers have not disdained the help of these borrowed graces for the crown of their fabric.  In this way De Quincey widens the imaginative range of his prose, and sets back the limits assigned to prose diction.  So too, Charles Lamb, interweaving the stuff of experience with phrases quoted or altered from the poets, illuminates both life and poetry, letting his sympathetic humour play now on the warp of the texture, and now on the woof.  The style of Burke furnishes a still better example, for the spontaneous evolution of his prose might be thought to forbid the inclusion of borrowed fragments.  Yet whenever he is deeply stirred, memories of Virgil, Milton, or the English Bible rise to his aid, almost as if strong emotion could express itself in no other language.  Even the poor invectives of political controversy gain a measure of dignity from the skilful application of some famous line; the touch of the poet’s sincerity rests on them for a moment, and seems to lend them an alien splendour.  It is like the blessing of a priest, invoked by the pious, or by the worldly, for the good success of whatever business they have in hand.  Poetry has no temporal ends to serve, no livelihood to earn, and is under no temptation to cog and lie:  wherefore prose pays respect to that loftier calling, and that more unblemished sincerity.

Insincerity, on the other hand, is the commonest vice of style.  It is not to be avoided, except in the rarest cases, by those to whom the written use of language is unfamiliar; so that a shepherd who talks pithy, terse sense will be unable to express himself in a letter without having recourse to the Ready Letter-writer—­“This comes hoping to find you well, as it also leaves me at present”—­ and a soldier, without the excuse of ignorance, will describe a successful advance as having been made against “a thick hail of bullets.”  It permeates ordinary journalism, and all writing produced under commercial pressure.  It taints the work of the young artist, caught by the romantic fever, who glories in the wealth of vocabulary discovered to him by the poets, and seeks often in vain for a thought stalwart enough to wear that glistering armour.  Hence it is that the masters of style have always had to preach restraint, self-denial, austerity.  His style is a man’s own; yet how hard it is to come by!  It is a man’s bride, to be won by labours and agonies that bespeak a heroic lover.  If he prove unable to endure the trial, there are cheaper beauties, nearer home, easy to be conquered, and faithless to their conqueror.  Taking up with them, he may attain a brief satisfaction, but he will never redeem his quest.