Only perhaps in Sophocles is there a perfect harmony of the two; in him
alone do we find a grace of language like the beauty of a Greek statue, in
which there is nothing to add or to take away; at least this is true of
single plays or of large portions of them. The connection in the Tragic
Choruses and in the Greek lyric poets is not unfrequently a tangled thread
which in an age before logic the poet was unable to draw out. Many
thoughts and feelings mingled in his mind, and he had no power of
disengaging or arranging them. For there is a subtle influence of logic
which requires to be transferred from prose to poetry, just as the music
and perfection of language are infused by poetry into prose. In all ages
the poet has been a bad judge of his own meaning (Apol.); for he does not
see that the word which is full of associations to his own mind is
difficult and unmeaning to that of another; or that the sequence which is
clear to himself is puzzling to others. There are many passages in some of
our greatest modern poets which are far too obscure; in which there is no
proportion between style and subject, in which any half-expressed figure,
any harsh construction, any distorted collocation of words, any remote
sequence of ideas is admitted; and there is no voice 'coming sweetly from
nature,' or music adding the expression of feeling to thought. As if there
could be poetry without beauty, or beauty without ease and clearness. The
obscurities of early Greek poets arose necessarily out of the state of
language and logic which existed in their age. They are not examples to be
followed by us; for the use of language ought in every generation to become
clearer and clearer. Like Shakespere, they were great in spite, not in
consequence, of their imperfections of expression. But there is no reason
for returning to the necessary obscurity which prevailed in the infancy of
literature. The English poets of the last century were certainly not
obscure; and we have no excuse for losing what they had gained, or for
going back to the earlier or transitional age which preceded them. The
thought of our own times has not out-stripped language; a want of Plato's