the more miraculous they grow. We can never hope to understand the secret of Homer's style. It is best to agree simply with Mr. Pater: "Homer was always saying things in this manner." We can never know how Keats came to write,
or those other lines, perhaps the most beautiful in our language,
"Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."
It is all a mystery, hidden from the uninspired, and Mr. Lowell's clean-built scaffolding, while it helps us to a comprehensive enjoyment of Shakespeare, leaves us dumb and amazed as ever before the concentrated splendor of a single line—
There is only one way to fathom its conception. The great waves reared their foamy heads, and whispered him the words.
The richness of Elizabethan English, the freedom and delight with which men sounded and explored the charming intricacies of a tongue that was expanding daily into fresh
