The mellow ouzel fluting in the elm.

Perhaps, as sound, it was.  Assuredly it makes a beautiful succession of sounds, and recalls the bird-sounds which it is intended to describe.  But does it live in the memory as one of the rare great Tennysonian lines?  It does not.  It has charm, but the charm is merely curious or pretty.  A whole poem composed of lines with no better recommendation than that line has would remain merely curious or pretty.  It would not permanently interest.  It would be as insipid as a pretty woman who had nothing behind her prettiness.  It would not live.  One may remark in this connection how the merely verbal felicities of Tennyson have lost our esteem.  Who will now proclaim the Idylls of the King as a masterpiece?  Of the thousands of lines written by him which please the ear, only those survive of which the matter is charged with emotion.  No!  As regards the man who professes to read an author “for his style alone,” I am inclined to think either that he will soon get sick of that author, or that he is deceiving himself and means the author’s general temperament—­not the author’s verbal style, but a peculiar quality which runs through all the matter written by the author.  Just as one may like a man for something which is always coming out of him, which one cannot define, and which is of the very essence of the man.

In judging the style of an author, you must employ the same canons as you use in judging men.  If you do this you will not be tempted to attach importance to trifles that are negligible.  There can be no lasting friendship without respect.  If an author’s style is such that you cannot respect it, then you may be sure that, despite any present pleasure which you may obtain from that author, there is something wrong with his matter, and that the pleasure will soon cloy.  You must examine your sentiments towards an author.  If when you have read an author you are pleased, without being conscious of aught but his mellifluousness, just conceive what your feelings would be after spending a month’s holiday with a merely mellifluous man.  If an author’s style has pleased you, but done nothing except make you giggle, then reflect upon the ultimate tediousness of the man who can do nothing but jest.  On the other hand, if you are impressed by what an author has said to you, but are aware of verbal clumsinesses in his work, you need worry about his “bad style” exactly as much and exactly as little as you would worry about the manners of a kindhearted, keen-brained friend who was dangerous to carpets with a tea-cup in his hand.  The friend’s antics in a drawing-room are somewhat regrettable, but you would not say of him that his manners were bad.  Again, if an author’s style dazzles you instantly and blinds you to everything except its brilliant self, ask your soul, before you begin to admire his matter, what would be your final opinion of a man who at the first meeting fired his