only does the writer, without thinking, choose the sort of style and
meaning which are most in vogue, but the writer is himself chosen. A
writer does not begin to write in the traditional rhythm of an age
unless he feels, or fancies he feels, a sort of aptitude for writing
it, any more than a writer tries to write in a journal in which the
style is uncongenial or impossible to him. Indeed if he mistakes he
is soon weeded out; the editor rejects, the age will not read his
compositions. How painfully this traditional style cramps great
writers whom it happens not to suit, is curiously seen in
Wordsworth, who was bold enough to break through it, and, at the
risk of contemporary neglect, to frame a style of his own. But he
did so knowingly, and he did so with an effort. 'It is supposed,' he
says, 'that by the act of writing in verse an author makes a formal
engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association;
that he not only then apprizes the reader that certain classes of
ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others
will be carefully eschewed. The exponent or symbol held forth by
metrical language must, in different ages of literature, have
excited very different expectations; for example, in the age of
Catullus, Terence, or Lucretius, and that of Statius or Claudian;
and in our own country, in the age of Shakespeare and Beaumont and
Metcher, and that of Donne and Cowley, or Pope.' And then, in a kind
of vexed way, Wordsworth goes on to explain that he himself can't
and won't do what is expected from him, but that he will write his
own words, and only his own words. A strict, I was going to say a
Puritan, genius will act thus, but most men of genius are
susceptible and versatile, and fall into the style of their age. One
very unapt at the assimilating process, but on that account the more
curious about it, says:--