The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), poet and Victorian critic, developed influential standards for judging poetry in essays and lectures that stress “high seriousness,” moral-intellectual power, and classical restraint. The remark about the “grand style” belongs to this critical project: Arnold was trying to explain why certain poets (especially Homer, Dante, Milton) achieve an elevated manner that feels both noble and inevitable, while others lapse into ornament, rhetoric, or mere cleverness. In discussing the “grand style,” Arnold links it not to decorative language but to the poet’s character and to an austere fitness between subject and expression—simplicity or severity applied to serious matter.

Arnold argues that true poetic grandeur is not produced by grandiose diction but by a convergence of three elements: a “noble nature” (ethical and imaginative stature), genuine poetic gift, and a serious subject handled with disciplined plainness. “Simplicity” and “severity” imply restraint—language pared down to what the subject demands, avoiding sentimentality and show. The claim also carries a critical warning: technical virtuosity alone cannot create the highest style if the poet’s mind and moral imagination are not equal to the theme. For Arnold, the “grand style” is thus an index of both artistic mastery and spiritual-intellectual elevation.