to the MacDonald Felspar deposit, then to the Richardson Felspar mine at Thirteen Island Lake. Leave at 11 a.m. by boat for the Glendower Iron mine. Leave Glendower 1.30 p.m. for Bedford and Parham to visit the gabbro cuts on the railway, and corundum-bearing anorthosite. Leave Parham 4.30 for Kingston.

AUGUST 6TH.

Leave Hotel Frontenac 7.30 by automobile for Kingston Mills, see contacts of Paleozoic sediments on Pre-Cambrian floor. Proceed at 8.30 along Rideau Canal to Blake's quarry to see Potsdam sandstone, with curious concretions. Return at 10 a.m. to Barriefield to see basal conglomerate of Ordovician. age; also post-glacial weathering of limestone. Return to Kingston 11.40 a.m. and take G.T.R. for Toronto 12.20 p.m.

Viewed then from the standpoint of the visitor; or the mining men of Canada whose properties were visited; or the Dominion and Provincial Governments the chief hosts; or from the standpoint of the few who undertook the task of entertaining the visitors, it is safe to conclude that the twelfth session of the International Congress of Geology was "really worth while."

M. B. BAKER.

ARNOLD'S DOCTRINE OF THE GRAND STYLE.

T is just sixty years since Matthew Arnold first used the

of 1853. He made no attempt to define the phrase, which he put in italics, but stated that the ancients were its "unapproachable masters." At once the Romantic critics of the period assailed him. But it was not till he attempted to define the term in the lectures "On Translating Homer," published in 1861, that the real controversy began a controversy which has lasted almost to our own day. Even to-day the Impressionistic critics, who for the moment are in the ascendant, snort at his doctrine while they wave it away as a piece of antiquated classicism. The discussion, however, has died down enough to let us examine Arnold's theory in the spirit of the historian of literary criticism. Such an examination should be not uninteresting - may perhaps have even something of freshness for the majority of readers. For Matthew Arnold has entered the limbo of literary critics; he has become a classic, and his works are unread save by the professional scholar.

The first attempt at definition of 'the grand style' is made in the second of the three lectures "On Translating Homer." Arnold has been arguing that the poetry of Homer has as one of its four characteristics, nobility of manner, and goes on to say, "So the insurmountable obstacle to believing the Iliad a consolidated work of several poets is this: that the work of great masters is unique; and the Iliad has a great master's genuine stamp, and that stamp is the grand style. Arnold then proceeds to illustrate what he means by quoting examples of the grand style from Homer, Vergil, Dante and Milton. As these examples all recur in passages to be quoted later they may be omitted here. In the third lecture he states: "To this metre, as used in the Paradise Lost, our country owes the glory of having produced one of the only two poetical works in the grand style which are to be found in the modern languages; the Divine Comedy of Dante is the other.. In this respect Milton possesses a distinction which even Shakespeare, undoubtedly the supreme poetical power in our literature, does

not share with him. Not a tragedy of Shakespeare but contains passages in the worst of all styles, the affected style; and the grand style, although it may be harsh,or obscure, or cumbrous, or over-balanced, is never affected."

As we might expect, these dogmatic and somewhat vague statements were vigorously opposed. In the 'Last Words' Arnold writes: "Nothing has raised more questioning among my critics than these words, noble, the grand style. . . Alas! the grand style is the last matter in the world for verbal definition to deal with adequately. One may say of it as is said of faith: "One must feel it in order to know what it is." But, as of faith, so too one may say of nobleness, of the grand style: "Woe to those who know it not!" . . . But let me, at any rate, have the pleasure of again giving, before I begin to try and define the grand style, a specimen of what it is;

Standing on earth, not wrapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days,
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues...

There is the grand style in perfection; and anyone who has a sense for it, will feel it a thousand times better from repeating those lines than from hearing anything I can say about it.

Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling what we say by examples. I think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject. . The best model of the grand style simple is Homer; perhaps the best model of the grand style severe is Milton. But Dante is remarkable for affording admirable examples of both styles. . and from him I will illustrate them both. . . . Dante has been telling Forese that Virgil had guided him through Hell, and he goes on:

Indi m'han tratto su gli suoi conforti,
Salendo e rigirando la Montagna

Che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti.

"Thence hath his comforting aid led me up, climbing and circling the Mountain, which straightens you whom the world made crooked.' These last words "la Montagna che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti," "the Mountain which straightens you

whom the world made crooked," for the Mountain of Purgatory, I call an excellent specimen of the grand style in severity, where the poet's mind is too full charged to suffer him to speak more explicitly. But the very next stanza is a beautiful specimen of the grand style in simplicity, where a noble nature and a poetical gift unite to utter a thing with the most limpid plainness and clearness:

Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna

Ch' io saro là dove fia Beatrice;

Quivi convien che senza lui rimagna.

"So long," Dante continues, "so long he (Virgil) saith he will bear me company, until I shall be there where Beatrice is; there it behoves that without him I remain." But the noble simplicity of that in the Italian no words of mine can render."

Farther on in the same essay Arnold turns again to the subject in a curious passage that seems almost a recantation of his former belief. "When there comes in poetry what I may call the lyrical cry, this transfigures everything, makes everything grand; the simplest form may be here even an advantage, because the flame of the emotion glows through and through it more easily. .

And I can listen to thee yet;

Can lie upon the plain

And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

Here the lyrical cry though taking the simple ballad-form, is as grand as the lyrical cry coming in poetry of an ampler form, as grand as the

of Ruth; as the

An innocent life, yet far astray!

There is a comfort in the strength of love

of Michael. In this way, by the occurrence of this lyrical cry, the ballad-poets themselves rise sometimes, though not so often as one might perhaps have hoped, to the grand style.

O lang, lang may their ladies sit,
Wi' their fans into their hand,
Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spence
Come sailing to the land.

O lang, lang may the ladies stand,

Wi' their gold combs in their hair,
Waiting for their ain dear lords,

For they'll see them nae mair.

However, Arnold speedily recurs to his former position in his closing remarks on the relative merits of the hexameter and the ballad measure. The most essentially grand and characteristic things of Homer are such things as

or as

ἔτλην δ ̓, οἳ οὔπω τις ἐπιχθόνιος βροτὸς ἄλλος
ἀνδρὸς παιδοφόνοιο ποτὶ στόμα χεῖρ ̓ ὀρέγεσθαι

καὶ σὲ, γέρον, τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὄλβιον εἶναι,

and of these the tone is given, far better than by anything of the balladists, by such things as the

Io no piangeva: si dentro impietrai:
Piangevan elli. . .

of Dante; or the

Fall'n Cherub; to be weak is miserable

of Milton"; that is the grand style into which the ballad writers may occasionally rise by the occurrence of the lyrical cry is not the same thing at all as the grand style of Homer. It is not the simple of severe treatment of a serious subject by a noble nature poetically gifted. So at least Arnold seems to imply by his comment on these examples.

In "The Study of Poetry" Arnold returns once more to this question of the grand style: It is his final word on the subject and must be quoted almost in full. "Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. . . . If we have any tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible. touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside them. Short passages, even single lines, will serve our turn quite sufficiently. Take . . . . the