distinguishable as the animals which Noah had no difficulty in sorting
into couples, such writers as poets, essayists, and novelists, who have
no limit imposed upon their distinction, are likely to be still more
distinct. Indeed, we find it so, for their work needs no signature,
since the "style"--their way of looking at things--reveals it. And yet,
though it is only the sum of all these separate personalities so
diverse and distinct, each age or generation possesses a certain
"style" of its own, unconsciously revealing a kind of general
personality. Everyone knows it is as unnecessary to date a book as a
church or a candlestick, since church and candlestick and book always
bear the date written on the face. The literature of the last three or
four generations, for instance, has been distinguished by Rebellion as a
"style." Rebellion has been the characteristic expression of its most
vital self.

It has been an age of rebels in letters as in life. Of course,
acquiescent writers have existed as well, just as in the Ark (to keep up
the illustration) vegetarians stood side by side with carnivors, and
hoofs were intermixed with claws. The great majority have, as usual,
supported traditional order, have eulogised the past or present, and
been, not only at ease in their generation, but enraptured at the vision
of its beneficent prosperity. Such were the writers and orators whom
their contemporaries hailed as the distinctive spokesmen of a happy and
glorious time, leaping and bounding with income and population. But, on
looking back, we see their contemporaries were entirely mistaken. The
people of vital power and prolonged, far-reaching influence--the
"dynamic" people--have been the rebels. Wordsworth (it may seem strange
to include that venerable figure among rebels, but so long as he was
more poetic than venerable he stood in perpetual rebellion against the
motives, pursuits, and satisfactions of his time)--Wordsworth till he