tastes, an unelevated and _unrhythmical_) style--take, for
instance, an Addisonian or a Swiftian style--is _unconditionally_
good. Not so: all depends upon the subject; and there is a style,
transcending these and all other modes of simplicity, by infinite
degrees, and, in the same proportion, impossible to most men, the
rhythmical, the continuous--what in French is called the
_soutenu_--which, to humbler styles stands in the relation of an organ
to a shepherd's pipe. This also finds its justification in its
subject; and the subject which _can_ justify it must be of a
corresponding quality--loftier--and therefore, rare."

I quote De Quincey because he has written more, and more profoundly as
well as more copiously, on style than any writer I know. To this
point,--the adaption of style to subject,--he returns, laying down
with clearness and truth the law which should here govern. In a paper
on Schlosser's "Literary History of the Eighteenth Century" he
reaffirms--what cannot be too strongly insisted on--the falsity of the
common opinion that Swift's style is, for all writers, a model of
excellence, showing how it is only fitted to the kind of subjects on
which Swift wrote, and concluding with this characteristic passage:
"That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any time had the
pleasure of conversing upon the subject of style (and pardon me for
saying that men of the most sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz.,
poetry and style, to talk _most_ like blockheads) have invariably
regarded Swift's style not as if _relatively_, (i.e., _given_ a proper
subject), but as if _absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter
what the subject. Now, my friend, suppose the case, that the dean had
been required to write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal
apostrophe to Death, or to many passages in Sir Thomas Brown's
'Religio Medici' and his 'Urn-Burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural