STC needs--and this is not, for me, a new thought--a good editor. He meanders so.
I like a good meandering as much as the next person, especially when we slip readily from English to Greek to Latin to French. I do have trouble remembering the ultimate purpose, though, of the argument, when we meander so.
My comment the other day about footnotes made something else occur to me, upon rereading. That is, when I pick up the book, it takes me a while to get used to it. There is a rhythm to prose from that time period, a delay that is not present in so much of what I read. I adjust, and am always fairly happy when I recognise that I have done so, but it takes a few moments. Once the adjustment happens, everything is so much easier to follow.
Except for the meandering, sometimes.

From Chapter I: "As the result of all my reading and meditation, I abstracted two critical aphorisms, deeming them to comprise the conditions and criteria of poetic style; first, that not the poem we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry. Second, that whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same language, without diminution of their significance, either in sense, or association, or in any worthy feeling, are so far vicious as their diction."