Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/143

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SHAKESPEARE AND THE GRAND STYLE
135

the limited greatness of 'giant mass' itself; but expands and flings it out into the obscure infinity of things to come, and of things to come at large. You have passed in some dozen or sixteen words, artfully selected, from the definite doll of the baby figure to the vast of Space and Time.

This may seem a fanciful sermon on a more fancifully selected text; but I venture to hope that it may induce some who have not yet thought on the matter to take not uninteresting views of the Grand Style in general and of Shakespeare's Grand Style in particular. They will not find these views easily exhaustible: all the less so because all really Grand Style appeals to a certain complementary gift and faculty in the person who is to appreciate it; it is a sort of infinitely varying tally, which awaits and adjusts itself to an infinite number of counter-pieces. It abides; the counter-pieces may get themselves ready as they can and will.

George Saintsbury.