Read it through once

On this I need not dilate: but I think it is worth while to say a word more about the common style, because this is something which we cannot perfectly illustrate from English poetry, and we are therefore apt to pay not enough deference to it. In modern European literature, the closest approximation to the ideal of a common style, is probably to be found in Dante and in Racine; the nearest we have to it in English poetry is Pope, and Pope's is a common style which, in comparison, is of a very narrow range. A common style is one which makes us exclaim, not 'this is a man of genius using the language' but 'this realises the genius of the language'. We do not say this when we read Pope, because we are too conscious of all the resources of the English speech upon which Pope does not draw; we can at most say 'this realises the genius of the English language of a particular epoch'.