It was in his lecture on Emerson that Matthew Arnold asked:  “Who are the great men of letters?”—­meaning thereby the masters of prose.  “They are men like Cicero, Plato, Bacon, Pascal, Swift, Voltaire—­writers with, in the first place, a genius and instinct for style, writers whose prose is by a kind of native necessity true and sound.”  The British critic added that:  “It is a curious thing, that quality of style, which marks the great writer, the born man of letters.  It resides in the whole tissue of his work, and of his work regarded as a composition for literary purposes.”  The six masters of prose whom Arnold chose have all of them this quality of style; and their prose is true and sound.  Altho this list of six was selected by an Englishman, and altho it contains the names of two Englishmen, it would be acceptable, one may venture to believe, to the cosmopolitan tribunal, to the heirs of the Latin tradition and to the peoples of the Teutonic stock.  It may lack the completeness and the finality of the limitation of the supreme poets to four; but it must be taken as a not unsuccessful attempt to select the supreme prose-writers.

Arnold excluded Emerson from the class of “great men of letters” because the American philosopher had not the instinct for style, and because his prose was not always true and sound.  Lowell, in a letter to a friend, protested against this, suggesting that the Oxford critic was like Renan in that he was apt to think “the superfine as good as the fine, or better even than that.”  Yet we may agree with the lecturer in holding that Emerson was rather to be ranked with Marcus Aurelius as “the friend of those who would live in the spirit,” than to be classed with Cicero and with Swift, obviously inferior in elevation and in aim, but both of them born men of letters.

In like manner we must strike out the name of Burke from among the great orators.  A political philosopher he was of keenest insight and of unfailing eloquence; but he was a poor speaker, and he did not often rivet the attention of the audiences he addrest.  This is why he cannot establish a claim to inclusion among the supreme orators.  Perhaps such a claim could be made good before the cosmopolitan tribunal by two speakers only, both belonging far back in the history of our civilization—­Demosthenes and Cicero.  Both revealed the needful double qualifications of the real orator, who shall hold his hearers in the hollow of his hand while he is speaking, bending them to his will and swaying them to the course he advocates, while the words he spoke then must survive now for our delight in their style and in their substance, a delight independent of the occasion of their utterance.