without eclecticism. Of [17] such eclecticism we have a justifying
example in one of the first poets of our time. How illustrative of
monosyllabic effect, of sonorous Latin, of the phraseology of
science, of metaphysic, of colloquialism even, are the writings of
Tennyson; yet with what a fine, fastidious scholarship throughout!

A scholar writing for the scholarly, he will of course leave
something to the willing intelligence of his reader. "To go preach
to the first passer-by," says Montaigne, "to become tutor to the
ignorance of the first I meet, is a thing I abhor;" a thing, in fact,
naturally distressing to the scholar, who will therefore ever be shy
of offering uncomplimentary assistance to the reader's wit. To
really strenuous minds there is a pleasurable stimulus in the
challenge for a continuous effort on their part, to be rewarded by
securer and more intimate grasp of the author's sense. Self-
restraint, a skilful economy of means, ascesis, that too has a beauty
of its own; and for the reader supposed there will be an aesthetic
satisfaction in that frugal closeness of style which makes the most
of a word, in the exaction from every sentence of a precise relief,
in the just spacing out of word to thought, in the logically filled
space connected always with the delightful sense of difficulty
overcome.

Different classes of persons, at different times, make, of course,
very various demands upon literature. Still, scholars, I suppose,
and not [18] only scholars, but all disinterested lovers of books,
will always look to it, as to all other fine art, for a refuge, a
sort of cloistral refuge, from a certain vulgarity in the actual
world. A perfect poem like Lycidas, a perfect fiction like Esmond,
the perfect handling of a theory like Newman's Idea of a University,