But it may be said that Shakespeare, the oceanic, the many-souled, was phenomenal, and that no rule can be based on the miracles of a cometary genius who has had no peer in the ages. What shall we say, then, to Izaak Walton? Can purer, more idiomatic, or more attractive English be found within the covers of any book than that of “The Complete Angler”? Among all the controversialists of England, is there one whose words hit harder,--are more like cannon-balls,--than those of Cobbett? By universal concession he was master of the whole vocabulary of invective, and in narration his pen is pregnant with the freshness of green fields and woods; yet neither he, nor “honest Izaak,” ever dug up a Greek root, or unearthed a Latin derivation. Let any one compare a page of Cobbett with a page of Bentley, the great classical critic, and he will find that the former writer excels the latter alike in clearness and precision of terms, in grammatical accuracy, and in the construction of his periods. Again, what shall we say of Keats, who could not read a line of Greek, yet who was the most thoroughly classical of all English authors,--whose soul was so saturated with the Greek spirit, that Byron said “he was a Greek himself”? Or what will the classicists do with Lord Erskine, confessedly the greatest forensic orator since Demosthenes? He learned but the elements of Latin, and in Greek went scarcely beyond the alphabet; but he devoted himself in youth with intense ardor to the study of Milton and Shakespeare, committing whole pages of the former to memory, and so familiarizing himself with the latter that he could almost, like Porson, have held conversations on all subjects for days together in the phrases of the great English dramatist. It was here that he acquired that fine choice of words, that richness of thought and gorgeousness of expression, that beautiful _rhythmus_ of his sentences, which charmed all who heard him.
If one must learn English through the Greek and Latin, how shall we account for the admirable,--we had almost said, inimitable,--style of Franklin? Before he knew anything of foreign languages he had formed his style, and gained a wide command of words by the study of the best English models. Is the essayist, Edwin P. Whipple, a master of the English language? He was not, we believe, classically educated, yet few American authors have a greater command of all the resources of expression. His style varies in excellence,--sometimes, perhaps, lacks simplicity; but, as a rule, it is singularly copious, nervous, and suggestive, and clear as a pebbled rill. What is the secret of this command of our tongue? It is his familiarity with our English literature. His sleepless intellect has fed and fattened on the whole race of English authors, from Chaucer to Currer Bell. The profound, sagacious wisdom of Bacon, and the nimble, brilliant wit of Sydney Smith; the sublime mysticism of Sir Thomas Browne, and the rich, mellow, tranquil beauty of Taylor; Jonson’s learned sock and Heywood’s ease; the gorgeous, organ-toned eloquence of Milton, and the close, bayonet-like logic of Chillingworth; the sweet-blooded wit of Fuller, and Butler’s rattling fire of fun; Spenser’s voluptuous beauty, and the lofty rhetoric, scorching wit, and crushing argument of South; Pope’s neatness, brilliancy, and epigrammatic point, and Dryden’s energy and “full resounding line”; Byron’s sublime unrest and bursts of misanthropy, and Wordsworth’s deep sentiment and sweet humanities; Shelley’s wild imaginative melody, and Scott’s picturesque imagery and antiquarian lore; the polished witticisms of Sheridan, and the gorgeous periods of Burke,--with all these writers, and every other of greater or lesser note, even those in the hidden nooks and crannies of our literature, he has held converse, and drawn from them expressions for every exigency of his thought.