his son. But it should not be attempted without a distinct intention of
submission on the part of the writer. The couplet transgressed against,
trespassed upon, used loosely, is like a law outstripped, defied--to the
dignity neither of the rebel nor of the rule.

To Letters do we look now for the guidance and direction which the very
closeness of the emotion taking us by the heart makes necessary. Shall
not the Thing more and more, as we compose ourselves to literature,
assume the honour, the hesitation, the leisure, the reconciliation of the
Word?




THE LITTLE LANGUAGE


Dialect is the elf rather than the genius of place, and a dwarfish master
of the magic of local things.

In England we hardly know what a concentrated homeliness it nourishes;
inasmuch as, with us, the castes and classes for whom Goldoni and Gallina
and Signor Fogazzaro have written in the patois of the Veneto, use no
dialect at all.

Neither Goldoni nor Gallina has charged the Venetian language with so
much literature as to take from the people the shelter of their almost
unwritten tongue. Signor Fogazzaro, bringing tragedy into the homes of
dialect, does but show us how the language staggers under such a stress,
how it breaks down, and resigns that office. One of the finest of the