defiance of the proprieties, whereas poets sometimes "flag, and
languish in a prosaic manner," prose will shine with the lustre,
vigour and boldness, with "the fury" of poetry.

And as to "affairs,"--how spasmodic the mixture, collision or
coincidence, of the mechanic succession of things with men's
volition! Mere rumour, so large a factor in events,--who could trace
out its ways? Various events (he was never tired of illustrating the
fact) "followed from the same counsel." Fortune, chance, that is to
say, the incalculable contribution of mere matter to man, "would
still be mistress of events"; and one might think it no un-wisdom to
commit everything to fortuity. But no! "fortune too is oft-times
observed to act by the rule of reason: chance itself comes round to
hold of justice;" war, above all, being a matter in which fortune was
inexplicable, though men might seem to have made it the main business
of their lives. If "the force of all counsel lies in the occasion,"
that is because things perpetually shift. If man--his taste, his
very conscience--change with the habit of time and place, that is
because habit is the emphatic determination, the tyranny, of changing
external and material circumstance. So it comes about that every one
gives the name of barbarism to what is not in use round about him,
excepting perhaps the Greeks and Romans, somewhat conventionally; and
Montaigne was fond of assuring people, [102] suddenly, that could we
have those privileged Greeks and Romans actually to sit beside us for
a while, they would be found to offend our niceties at a hundred
points. We have great power of taking ourselves in, and "pay
ourselves with words." Words too, language itself, and therewith the
more intimate physiognomy of thought, "slip every day through our
fingers." With his eye on his own labour, wistfully, he thought on
the instability of the French language in particular--a matter, after