Nothing melts us like nobility of thought caught up into style. Nobility stirs us more exquisitely than exquisiteness. Imagination, however sympathetic, warms us but superficially compared with the high disinterestedness of personal detachment exhibited in impersonal exaltation. This moves us like music that strings the sensibility taut and affirms its capacity for forgetfulness of self. Style, in fine, has a play of interrelations and a sustained rhythm, when in combination with adequate substance, that stanch the personal preoccupation of self-pity and stimulate the generous fervor of self-abandonment to the ideal.
In an effort to convey, or at least to suggest, the singular fire and potency of Mr. Brownell's special virtue, his enkindling passion for the ideal in art, letters and life, I have left no space to comment upon his fruitful, many-sided development of his theme, which he has enriched from an extensive field under perfect cultivation. I particularly regret the necessity of abridgment, because Mr. Brownell has here given full and most stimulating development to that aspect of his subject which the high intellectuality of his talent has hitherto led him to postpone, or to underemphasize, in behalf of the more abstract, structural elements of style. I refer to his illuminating discussion of "poetic prose," to his finely eloquent justification of emotion and, above all, to his plea for the cultivation by our own writers of the too long neglected poetic resources of prose speech. Those who are familiar with Mr. Brownell's previous books—as every one who cares for our distinguished criticism is—will doubtless regard this salient as the point at which he has most signally advanced his flag of leadership. It gives a curious relief to a reviewer to know
