" But it is certainly very important that when the great moment
comes we should be prepared for it. Then a lofty and more or less
artificial style is demanded as imperatively as the key-stone of an arch
when the arch is completed except for the key-stone. Without the
ability to write one lofty sentence, all else that we have said may
completely fail of its effect, however excellent in itself.
There are three kinds of prose which may be used on such occasions as
we have described. The lowest and most common of these, as it is the
most artificial and most easily acquired, is the rhetorical, or
oratorical, style, the style of all orators, the style which is called
eloquence. Of course we may find specimens of it in actual oratory, but
it is best illustrated in its use for written compositions in Macaulay.
The next variety, more rarely used, was especially developed if not
actually invented by De Quincey and was called by him impassioned prose.
It would seem at first that language could go no higher; but it does
mount a little higher simply by trying to do less, and we have loftiness
in its plain simplicity, as when man stands bareheaded and humble in the
presence of God alone.
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