CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ENGLISH COLLECTION 
 
 HIE GIFT OF 
 
 JAMES MORGAN HART 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGIJSH 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH PROSE 
 STYLE. 
 
 THE 
 
 CHANCELLOR'S ESSAY, 
 
 1 881. 
 
 C: RrLf FLETCHER, BA., 
 
 MAGDALEN COLLEGE. 
 
 OXFORD : 
 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, 50, BROAD STREET. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. 
 
 1881. 
 
 H 
 
A-'^'^356.U. 
 
 *' Indeed, nobody now talks of style, everyone 
 composes pretty well." 
 
 Boswell's Johnson, Croker's Edition, 
 (Vol. 4, p. 103). 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH 
 PROSE STYLE. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 IF we see the " spirit" of a nation most faith- 
 fully embodied in its poetry, it is in the 
 prose literature that we must look for the less glov?ing but more 
 accurate reflection of its " genius." 
 
 Poetry for the most part is the result of spasmodic outbursts, 
 consequent upon fits of national self-consciousness, such as are 
 caused by a sudden opening up of new foreign relations, or by 
 successful wars : fits like these are intermittent ; 
 when the pulse of the nation has ceased to beat ^Poetr^f '^°''^ '° 
 with feverish activity poetry will probably be 
 comparatively neglected; whereas prose being the vehicle of 
 all natural thought will, among a people v^hich is making 
 steady progress towards self-education, maintain a more even 
 course of development. No doubt in a minor degree the 
 prose literature of a country will always reflect passing phases of 
 national character, and it would be unsafe to lay down any very 
 formal generalization on the point; but the distinction just given 
 seems to be the usual one between metrical and unmetrical 
 composition, viewed as factors in history. 
 
 Perhaps, too, this is the cause why poetry has in all great 
 nations been an earlier growth than prose. The fits of self- 
 consciousness to which I have referred often come upon a people 
 long before there is any vestige of education p^„^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ;„. 
 abroad. Nay, often before a language has been augurate new in- 
 formed at all; for it is generally m the very S^tiie 'language 
 dawning of the idea of nationahty that a language •'^ ^^"' formed, 
 springs up, and then poetry sometimes consciously forces upon 
 its readers a speech, which is to become common to the nation, 
 and which is as yet quite imperfect ; one need only call to mind 
 Chaucer and Dante, the latter of whom is said to have hesitated 
 whether he should choose Provencal or Sicilian as the material 
 out of which he was to fashion a language. It is an indisputable 
 fact that nearly all n.itional literatures- -that is, literatures which 
 
 E 
 
4 The Development of 
 
 have not been transplanted half-grown from foreign soils — have 
 begun in some great poem, and that prose has followed at a 
 respectful distance of time. The Homeric poems preceded the 
 history of Herodotus, the Edda preceded the Sagas, and the 
 Divina Commedia preceded the Decamerone. 
 
 The sequence of poe- The direct Sequence pf the t\yo kinds of corn- 
 try and prose in position IS not SO clear in the history of English 
 England. literature ; Chaucer is far before any literary 
 
 prose writer, and he is perhaps to be considered as much the 
 founder of our modern tongue as Dante is of Italian, but we 
 cannot shut our eyes to the fact that he himself wrote more than 
 one of the "Canterbury Tales" in prose, and that Sir John 
 Mandeville, who translated into English his own Latin account 
 of a life of perhaps slightly imaginary travel in "Cathay" and 
 other uncertain regions, actually lived before Chaucer. 
 
 Besides the English tracts of Wycliffe, -the 14th and 15 th 
 centuries produced several minor compositions in the various 
 dialects of our mother tongue ; but it is not until the impetus 
 given to learning by the Renaissance had produced a high level 
 of education among the upper classes that any real literary prose 
 Late development '^^'^ t)e Considered to have existed. The reason 
 of English as a of this delay in the development of the English 
 iterary anguage. language as the means of expressing the thoughts 
 of educated people is an obvious and simple one, namely, the 
 constant use of Latin as the universal medium of thought. This 
 was owing primarily to the influence of the Roman Church which 
 still continues to employ Latin in its diplomatic communications : 
 but even when the religious barriers to free thought were to a 
 certain extent broken down, — a process which was going on in 
 England in a greater or less degree from the end of the 14th 
 century, — the interest which all intelligent people felt in the rich 
 mines of learning, which began to be opened to the Western 
 world even before the fall of Constantinople, and the rage for 
 unearthing old MSS. of the classics which immediately set in, 
 rendered almost necessary the maintenance of some common 
 speech in which the disciples of learning could be understood by 
 their brethren of all nationalities. Thus the Renaissance may 
 be said in one aspect to have retarded the growth of national 
 literatures. 
 
 Division of the Subject. . ^^ attempting to give a picture of a national 
 hterature, which possesses a continuous history, 
 we naturally meet with divisions indicated ready to our hands, and 
 where such landmarks exist it is extremely difficult to avoid 
 following them. It is only by tracing out some broad divi- 
 sions of English literature that we hope to arrive at a com- 
 prehension of the changes which the style of our prose writing 
 has undergone. 
 
English Prose Style. 5 
 
 The main divisions, then, into which I intend 
 to let the subject fall, though it may seem '^gi"h''"i.°/ersf aiTd 
 rather a fanciful arrangement, are marked off, consequently 'three 
 not so much by different classes of prose writers, writers. ° °^ " 
 as by the different classes of those for whom 
 prose has been written ; the gradual expansion of what has been 
 called the "literary public" will affoiy the best basis upon which 
 to work : and this expansion, though in the main steady and con- 
 tinuous, having been helped or retarded by its several exterior 
 influences, admits of two distinct lines of demarcation, which give 
 us three distinct classes of readers. To each of these classes will 
 be found assigned, as if by a natural law, a tolerably distinct class 
 of writers. 
 
 I. — In the early days of English prose literature 
 — and it does not seem desirable to date the "^^ 'Teeo.' ''°°~ 
 commencement of such before Sir Thomas The reading public 
 More — books were written only for scholars; consists of scholars, 
 the style was a scholarly style ; their authors P™== g^-js >= =• 
 loaded them with quotations from the classics, as 
 if pre-supposing the ability of their readers to understand them. 
 The revival of classical learning and its patronage by Henry VIII. 
 and his nobles had produced a very considerable if superficial know- 
 ledge of ancient literature among the courtiers and the circles of 
 society near the court. Henry's son,and one at least of his daughters, 
 extended their influence in the same direction, so that by the end 
 of Elizabeth's reign, there may be said to have been a very con- 
 siderable number of people qualified to understand scholarly 
 books. To suit this audience the style of the age was modelled. 
 Prose literature in this first period is a fine art. 
 
 II. — The unpopularity of the court and the 
 church, during the reigns of the first two Stuarts, Second period, 1660 
 
 , 11, • c ^^ ' — 1800. 
 
 seems to have retarded the expansion of this ^^ _.^^^.^^ ^^^^.^^ 
 literary public, but with the restoration, contempo- consists of men of 
 raneously with the appearance of foreign in- the world, 
 fluences, we find visible traces of the growth of a ^r^^rXV^i ha" 
 much larger class of readers. This second class become aprofession. 
 is composed of people whom we may describe as 
 men of the world, the germ of that society which became the 
 audience of Addison, Steele, and Bolingbroke, the society of 
 which " Esmond " gives us so delightful a picture. To meet the 
 wants of this audience a new literature and a new class of authors 
 arose. These men were writers for bread. Prose literature, 
 without entirely ceasing to become a fine art has become a pro- 
 fession. 
 
 IIL-The third and last class of people for ^ ,^^^^_ 
 whom English prose has been written, is really 
 
6 The Development of 
 
 Th. reading public Only a vast expansion of the second ; but it is 
 of the last period is distinctly marked off from its predecessor Dy tne 
 e"n''to'admk'^ui increased demand for a more popularised English 
 educated people. literature, which followed the extension of English 
 ^fa?tor"n'X Na^ interest in the outside world after 1815. This 
 tionai Education. interest has gone on expanding with great 
 rapidity to our own day. It is this class which constitutes the 
 reading public of the present generation. We live in an atmos- 
 phere eminently unproductive of literary giants, for " that which 
 was once the heritage of the few has suffered in its distribution 
 among the many;" but we have abundance of writers who satisfy 
 the wants of this increasing class of readers. Prose is now written 
 for everybody, and has become an important factor in the national 
 education. 
 
 c' tinuit ofthede While the literature of some countries springs 
 
 velopment" of'our at once into fuU Stature, in others it is slowly 
 prose style. matured by steps, of which every one can be 
 
 traced. The arrangement of writers into three divisions, above 
 given, shows that England possesses a fairly continuous develop- 
 ment of literary prose. Our prose has had no "cataclysms" 
 such as came over our poetry in the 15th and i8th centuries. 
 
 Entirely national and free from foreign in- 
 Foreign influences. fl^g„j,eg ^g cannot call it, for besides the 
 
 revival of classical learning which gave it its first itnpetus, there 
 was a marked period of Itahan influence in the middle of the 
 1 6th century, and a marked period of French in the latter half of 
 the 17th. But it is very doubtful whether any literature, except 
 that pf the Scandinavian nations, has ever been quite isolated, and 
 certainly it would seem a very questionable benefit for any 
 literature to be so. In what direction we are tending at the 
 present day, when national education is beginning to be a reality, 
 I shall endeavour to point out after a brief examination of the 
 three periods above mentioned.^ 
 
 I. — I do not propose to trace the development of English prose 
 literature from an earlier date than the commencement of the first 
 of these three periods, that is from the rise of an English 
 
 "Note. — It is somewhat strange to notice that the one ancient prose 
 literature which, brief as its life was, developed itself by regular steps to a very 
 high point of splendour, namely the Athenian, toolc the very opposite direction 
 from that which English is now following. We are, perhaps, in danger of for- 
 getting form in our superabundance of matter, whereas the oratory of the 
 Athenian law courts (the school in which prose reached its most admirable 
 style), having been raised to the highest scientific form, lost its use for practical 
 purposes. The influence which was exercised by the speeches, both in the 
 iKKKi]isia., and in the law courts, could only exist in a small and thoroughly 
 self-conscious community such as Athens. Sheridan and perhaps Erskine have 
 left their mark upon English prose, but it is rather from an external point that 
 they have done so; they have not assisted at the making of the language. [See 
 on the question Jebb's Atlic Orators.'] 
 
English Prose Style. 7 
 
 literary public, however narrow. Before the opening of the i6th 
 century there was no such body of men in existence, and even in 
 the early years of the Renaissance it was very small. The first 
 violent conflict of the Reformation was not a 
 literary -strife, except in so far as the ends of the '^cemu^t^™'^' '^* 
 two parties were promoted or retarded by 
 published writings ; it was a war of religious pamphlets, 
 none of which are a model of good English, ^^^^^ ^ ^^^^^^^ 
 and of which the success depended to some tjon on our prose 
 extent on their author's command of strong Ian- '"^'^a""'=- 
 guage. However striking and pithy are some of Latimer's 
 rude sentences, however perspicuous some of the earlier 
 ecclesiastical documents, such as the first book of homilies, they 
 cannot be said to have contributed to the development of English 
 prose style to any considerable extent. 
 
 But of the predecessors of Hooker, who is ^ . 
 generally considered the first real writer of " ^"^^ ° °™ '^''*' 
 " style," we may select Sir Thos. More, Roger Ascham, John Lily, 
 and perhaps the Jesuit, Father Parsons (the last on the authority 
 of Swift), as the four greatest masters of their native language. 
 The " Life and Times of King Edward V." is .. „, -, 
 really a classical work, and " Utopia" has been " ""^ 
 said by Professor Minto to be almost an English classic. The 
 meaning of the last statement of course is that the " Utopia" 
 expresses most clearly the ideas which would be current in the 
 mind of the most highly cultivated English intellect of the day, 
 and it does not refer to the style; although the translation of 
 1552, in which form most people are acquainted with More's little 
 work, is certainly a marvel of lucidity and beauty for its age. 
 More is altogether before his time, so far as anyone can be said to 
 occupy such a position, both in his thoughts and in his methods of 
 expressing them. For nearly a hundred years afterwards we do 
 not meet with such a vigorous, perspicuous, and above all such an 
 evidently thoughtful style. He was perhaps one of the few men 
 of the 1 6th century who had any command over their pens, who 
 wrote as they thought ; and his thoughts must have been always 
 clear as they were always noble. I do not wish to attempt any- 
 thing like a series of quotations even from the most representative 
 authors, but I cannot refrain from inserting a fev7 lines from a 
 letter from More to his wife which is given in Mr. Baptiste 
 Scoone's^ delightful collection : 
 
 " He sent us all that we have lost ; and sith He hath by such a 
 " chance taken it away again His pleasure be fulfilled. Let us 
 " never grudge thereat but take it in good worth and heartily 
 " thank Him as well for adversity as for prosperity. And per- 
 " adventure we have more cause to thank Him for our loss than 
 
 *> " Four Centuries of English Letters." 
 
8 The Development of 
 
 " for our winning. For His wisdom better seeth what is good 
 " for us than we do ourselves." 
 
 These few lines of consolation for a domestic misfortune are 
 as far superior in point of what we now consider good style, to the 
 laboured writings of the next century and a half, as they are 
 superior in their spirit of resignation to the temper of the age m 
 which they were written. One can hardly blame the somewhat 
 excessive use of abstract ideas in which More indulges, when 
 one reflects on his philosophical and thoughtful nature. He uses 
 in his " Edward V." a more practical and more concrete language 
 than any other writer before Dryden. 
 
 But More was an isolated phenomenon in 
 
 S.r Thomas Elyot. ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^_ ^j^^ ^^j^ ^^^^^^ ^^j^^^ ^f jj^g 
 
 period whose work is worthy of remark in the history of English 
 
 prose is Sir Thomas Elyot, whose " Boke of the Governour" shews 
 
 a distinct purpose of building up a good vocabulary. His merit 
 
 lies chiefly in this that he saw clearly that there was a multitude of 
 
 English ideas, which could never be expressed by terms built up 
 
 on purely English roots, and he therefore consciously adopted 
 
 many Latin words and phrases into his mother tongue. ■= But his 
 
 sentences are exceedingly involved and obscure, and he evidently 
 
 wrote with great labour to himself. Soon after 
 
 lan m uence. j^.^ ^.^^ ^^ begin to See traces of the influence of 
 
 Italy. These came no doubt in the wake of those scholars who 
 
 had gone, like Grocyn and Linacre in the early years of the 
 
 century, to learn Greek in the land where it was taught best, and 
 
 had brought back with them a tinge of the pedantic blight which 
 
 was rapidly overclouding the brilliant summer of Italian culture ; 
 
 although Ascham, like Elyot, distinctly sets before 
 
 oger sc am. jjjjjjggif ^j^g determination to study the English 
 
 language with a view to composition as a fine art, and bears few 
 
 marks of the influence of foreign pedantry. 
 
 Euphuism was probably the fashionable Court dialect 
 '^' before Lily's time, but Lily being a master of the style, 
 his novel was taken as typical, and gave its name to the language 
 which we find so ably satirised by Scott in the character of Sir 
 Piercie Shafton. The criticisms of Sidney, and indeed his own 
 prose, although diffusive and ill-connected, affords clear proof that 
 the Euphuists were not entirely masters of the literary stage. But 
 they left an enduring mark behind them : 
 
 " The absurd surfeit to the ears" of which 
 
 ^EuphikSi''"''"'^ Sidney accuses Lily of being the author, was 
 
 toned down into the rich and melodious style of 
 
 1= Note. — This process went on throughout the iSth century, every writer 
 adding a little to the stock of Latin words grafted on the English language ; 
 so that where the Wiclif Bible has the "again-rising of doom," the A. V. has 
 " resurrection of damnation." 
 
English Prose Style. 9 
 
 Hooker, and gave rise to much of the fanciful word play of Jeremy 
 Taylor, who is said to have exceedingly admired Lily's writings. 
 
 John Lily was a few years younger than Richard j^. , , „ , 
 Hdoker, but the " Euphues " was published in 1579 
 and 1580,, whereas the "Ecclesiastical Polity" was not written 
 till the later years of Hooker's life, and was given to the world in 
 1594. The publication of this book is said to mark an era in 
 English prose : this is true so far as it is the first instance of pure 
 prose applied to an important literary purpose. The earlier part 
 of Elizabeth's reign was a period of stirring 
 activity; the nation was on the tiptoe of ex- Why a literary prose 
 pectancy ; it was starting in the great race of ^^^ iltLr''yla™of 
 foreign adventure, was at the same time engaged Elizabeth's reign. 
 in a struggle against the overshadowing might of 
 Spain, and yet at home felt itself by no means secure from revolu- 
 tion. It would not have been unlikely that England should 
 awake one morning to find Elizabeth assassinated and Mary on 
 her march to London : ecclesiastical controversies were also very 
 life, and had to be conducted in the most hurried manner con- 
 ceivable. All this retarded the tranquillity which is inseparable 
 from an Augustan age ; but with the later years of the Queen's 
 reign there came a period of triumph abroad and security at home, 
 under a very fairly liberal government, which 
 was eminently favourable to such a development. Favourable condi- 
 
 . r -n 11 tions of the later 
 
 The great Augustan age of France on the other years of Elizabeth, 
 hand sprang from the peace of despotism, 
 following soon after civil war; and, in conse- ^forniTn^u"^"^^ 
 quence, French Literature took a different turn Age." 
 from English. The so-called Augustan age of 
 Anne bore in truth little resemblance to its fancied model : it 
 was rather, as I have said above, a. period in which, the habit of 
 reading having been extended to a larger class of people than 
 before, style had been compelled to descend from its stilts to suit 
 its paces to the public taste. But the age of Hooker and Bacon 
 was truly an Augustan age, as much in the bold flights of rhetoric 
 of the one, as in the heroic researches into science of the other. 
 
 Hooker is one of the few instances of a writer Hooker's style 
 whose fame rests almost entirely on his style ; indeed 
 there seems to be a litde else new or original in his works, except 
 the studied moderation and fairness with which he wrote. _ It is 
 the extraordinary richness of his language, and certain distinct 
 steps which he took towards what is called a . 
 
 "periodic" style, which has earned him the "Ven'odic"5°yk.° 
 excessive praise bestowed by Hallam, and 
 Mr. Ruskin's declaration that he has consciously endeavoured 
 to make the " Ecclesiastical Polity " his model. The beauti- 
 ful flow of Hooker's words reflects the serenity of his temper ; 
 he was exceedingly fond of music; he lived a retired life 
 
io The Development of 
 
 in a beautiful country, he wrote in a peaceful decade, every- 
 thing indeed worked together for him in favour of successful 
 composition His sentences are finished and neat, but clearness 
 of expression and adherence to one definition were things unknown 
 to the writers of the i6th century; and Hooker is no exception 
 to the rule. The best instance of this is the loose rendering of 
 words in the translations from Latin which abound in his work ; 
 Hooker seems to have been aware of this fault, but to have been 
 incapable of correcting it. It was not that men's thoughts were 
 confused in those days, but that their pens had not learnt to follow 
 their thoughts. 
 
 Most of Bacon's best work was written after 1620, 
 Francis Bacon. ^^^^ j^ to Say the "Advancement of Learning," his 
 " History of Henry VII.," and his " Essays." To attempt any- 
 thing like criticism of these splendid monuments of our language 
 would be quite in vain : it will be enough to notice the salient 
 points in which his writings influenced the development of 
 English prose literature. In the matter of diction he uses more 
 obsolete words than either Hooker or Sidney, but he is immeasur- 
 ably superior to them both in the perspicuity of his sentences 
 which, though occasionally involved, as a rule allow us to see into 
 his thoughts with great distinctness. The aphoristic style 
 of his essays is worthy of all praise, and he may be considered 
 the first English master of antithesis : it was perhaps his work in 
 this direction which gave his peculiar bent to the hterature of the 
 early part of the 17th century. The men of that age delighted in 
 a neatly balanced, if somewhat pedantic and laboured, antithetical 
 construction. In spite of his obsolete words and Latinisms he 
 is easy to comprehend, because he is neither an affected nor an 
 emotional writer. His cold nature and judicial mind repelled 
 both these faults, and his labours might have been employed with 
 the greatest advantage on valuable historical investigations had he 
 not been engaged in the still more precious discoveries of natural 
 science. 
 
 To the same Augustan age belong the great 
 
 ^Augu^In Age.*^ ""^ divines who made the English pulpit famous for 
 
 excellent logic, and for the fanciful quotations 
 
 from Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, with which they 
 
 u pi e oquence. regaled the ears of even the most rustic audiences : 
 
 it could not be supposed that these would be understood, but the 
 
 ecclesiastics of that day seem to have considered that they were 
 
 bound to show their knowledge of the dead languages, and the 
 
 people seem to have looked for this display of superior erudition 
 
 in their pastors as a necessity of each Sunday. Nothing shows 
 
 more clearly than the style of sermons the change which had 
 
 come over the religious life of England since the stirring days of 
 
 Latimer; in his time it was necessary to excite powerfully the 
 
 feelings of the people, and hence his coarse and homely language 
 
English Prose Style. i i 
 
 was uttered with a most forcible delivery, such as we do not meet 
 with again until the sonorous periods of the learned and refined 
 Carolian divines have been drowned in the rising tumult of civil 
 war. The most representative of these preachers and writers were 
 Lancelot Andrewes, Dr. Donne, and perhaps Bp.LancdotAndrewes. 
 Jeremy Taylor, who, though of a younger 
 generation, belonged in all his ideas no less than in his style to 
 the later years of Charles I. reign. Andrewes will be chiefly 
 remembered as one of the translators of the Bible into the form 
 which we now use. The various translations The translation of the Bibk. 
 of this book are usually regarded as havmg 
 been landmarks in the development of English style. The 
 authorized version of 1611 has been said to be a typical 
 specimen of the purest period of English, the reign of King James 
 I. Whether the age of King James is the purest age of our 
 mother tongue or not, it is certainly an error to say that the 
 translation of 161 1 is typical of the age in which it was drawn up ; 
 this version was issued professedly and closely on the lines of the 
 somewhat faulty version then in use, known as the " Bishop's 
 Bible," which had been put forward under the supervision of Matthew 
 Parker forty years before ; that version again had been copied as 
 nearly as possible from Cranmer's translation : in each case faults 
 were corrected, and many obsolete words were omitted, but little 
 modernising of the style took place. A comparison of that 
 portion of our Bible which reads most like a modern book with 
 the language of Bacon will at once dispel the illusion that the 
 language of the authorised version is the language of King James' 
 time. On the anti-Erastian side, while ecclesiastical controversy 
 was yet dignified, we find the_ names of chiiiingworth and Hales. 
 Chilhngworth and Hales, who bemg scholars 
 rather than fanatics, and not being trammelled by blind obedience 
 to any theories, escaped the errors, both of matter and style, 
 which soon begame common to the violent partisans of either view. 
 We must not omit to notice Lord Herbert , j „ , . <■ ^^i , 
 
 , J • u 1 t.- ,. r tJ Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 
 
 of Cherbury s admirable history of Henry 
 VIII., which is undoubtedly the best work of its kind before the 
 Restoration : the English is a model of purity, and perhaps the 
 very best prose, in the sense of being most comprehensible to 
 modern ears, before Dryden's ; the periods are well constructed, 
 though not quite so abundant in antithesis as those of Bacon. 
 
 There have been two great epochs in the history of the English 
 pulpit ; the first the one to which I have just referred, and the 
 second that which followed soon alter the Restoration, and which 
 produced such men as Tillotson, South, and Burnet. The chro- 
 nological link between these epochs is found in a man who in all 
 but time belonged to the earlier of the two. Jeremy j„j„ ^^ j^j. 
 Taylor's style is the most perfect example of "'"^ ^^ °^' 
 
 " Linked sweetness long drawn out." 
 
12 The Development of 
 
 In him no less than in Hooker, language is but a reflection of one 
 of the most beautiful characters with whom our history is fur- 
 nished. His " Holy Living and Holy Dying" will always be 
 recognised equally with the " De Imitatione Christi" as a perfect 
 exposition of Christianity as it has appeared to the purest minds. 
 Eut for our present purpose his " Liberty of Prophesying" is the 
 school wherein the richness of diction of the pulpit oratory of his 
 age may be studied to the most perfect advantage. His similes are 
 never-ending, but he differs from his contemporaries in this that, 
 though his classical learning is wide and varied, they are derived 
 principally from external nature and from the deeper feelings of 
 humanity rather than from books. So tender indeed are his 
 expressions, that his style has been accused of a want of manliness 
 and vigour. 
 
 The Civil Wars made a violent breach in the 
 ^rcivrwars 'in development of our literature : they brought 
 the continuity of de- tg the tOD Other elements, which during the long- 
 
 velopement of prose .. *■ . ,rii ^ r /■ 
 
 style. rising excitement of the decades 1020 — 1640 
 
 had been preparing to break down the despotism 
 of the Stuarts, and the laboured eloquence which while it had in- 
 creased in refinement of form had rather lost in solidity of matter. 
 Intellectual activity was indeed by no means completely inter- 
 , , , .,. rupted in the same sense that Constitutional his- 
 
 Pamphlet writing. ^ . , , ^ r 
 
 tory was mterrupted between 1640 and 1660, for 
 the warfare was waged with the pen as well as with the sword, 
 and to this we owe much of Milton's prose writing; but such 
 publications as exercised any influence on their respective causes 
 were necessarily too hasty, too much coloured by the violent 
 passions of the time, religious and political, to improve the 
 English language. We must look backward to the age of 
 Elizabeth and James, or forward to the Restoration, to find any 
 very immortal specimen of our literature. 
 
 M.Taine on Milton. "^ ^f^^ before me," says M. Taine, "the 
 formidable volume in which some time after 
 " Milton's death his prose works were collected. What a book ! 
 " The chairs creak when you place it on them, and a man who 
 " turned over its leaves for an hour would have more pain in his 
 "arm than in his head. As the book, so were the men," etc.'^ 
 ,,.,, •, We can hardly expect from a Frenchman 
 
 Milton as a prose writer. . .' <^ . v-».iij«.n 
 
 anything hke a just estimate of the essentially 
 English vigour of Milton's prose. The intellect of the great 
 Puritan is quite foreign to the ideas of the most cultivated 
 Frenchman. M. Taine, moreover, judges England and its litera- 
 ture from an ultra-French point of view: his work is even, 
 considering the nationality of its author, exceedingly superficial. 
 He has, however, plenty of astonished admiration for the " dis- 
 
 ^ Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise," tome 2, p. 435. 
 
English Prose Style. 13 
 
 ciplined army of Milton's arguments," for the tremendous learning 
 which he displays, and the magnificent claims for freedom which 
 he advances. He compares him to Swift ; then to a brazen 
 trumpet ; then to one of Michael Angelo's archangels ; and finally 
 concludes that he is not truly a prose writer ; " imagination and 
 " enthusiasm have carried him away enchained into metaphor ; 
 " thus dazzled or marred he could not produce a perfect work, he 
 " could but write useful tracts." That this is in many respects 
 a fair criticism of Milton's prose cannot be denied, but his value 
 in the eyes of Englishmen will always lie in the mere strength of 
 his expressions. He first shewed what the force of English 
 language was capable of. His style is involved and overloaded 
 with imagery no less brilliant than Taylor's, while quite devoid of 
 Taylor's harmony and sweetness : but the historical circumstances 
 of the " Areopagitica" will always make it interesting, in spite of 
 the rather " cramped hand," so to speak, in which its vehement 
 language is confined. Milton owned himself that he had the use 
 of prose writing only with his left hand. 
 Jeremy Taylor is really the last writer of the „■-,-, . , 
 
 ''.,'',./ , ■' , - 1 - End of the first period. 
 
 period which we have been considering, 
 wherein the reading public was composed of men thoroughly 
 learned according to the style of learning then prevalent in 
 England : England was in his time already prepared to listen to 
 something different from their " cumulative sentences," their 
 tedious quotations, their once splendid but at last somewhat 
 sickly exuberance of fancy ; and to turn, if to writers of meaner 
 language as of meaner moral stature, to writers in whom at least 
 the man of the world was not wholly sunk in the man of 
 literature. 
 
 II. — The reaction in French literature against g j p ■ j 
 the Italian affectations, which had become fashion- 
 able at Court when the influence of Mary de Medici was in the 
 ascendant, was beginning some time before 1660, but it wanted 
 expression until Boileau published his " Satires," which may be re- 
 garded as dealing a final blow to the extrava- influence of France, 
 gancesof the " Precieuses." With the Restoration and especially of 
 in England, French influence streamed into the ^°''«^"' 
 court life of St. James', and Boileau was almost immediately taken 
 as a literary high priest in both countries. English writers, how- 
 ever, erred in relying on him too much, and following too closely 
 the standard of classicalism, which he set up and which can be 
 traced throughout the works of the writers of the " Age of Anne." 
 From this time began in English prose literature that which 
 M. Taine calls the " Classic Age." 
 
 Cowley had perhaps led the way in the 
 reaction against the earlier style, but, easy and °*°^' 
 
 graceful as some of his essays are, it is not to him but to 
 "Glorious John" Dryden that we must trace the true dawn of a 
 
14 The Development of 
 
 new era of English prose. Dryden is the first 
 '^rofMsiOTaUuthor! persou who will write either poetry or prose to 
 
 order with the most complete indifference, as he 
 is also the first of the " writers for bread," the first professional 
 author. 
 
 There seems no reason to doubt that the transition of literature 
 from a fine art to a profession must be accompanied with a 
 deterioration both of style and matter; but at the period in 
 question some popularisation was emphatically demanded on 
 account of the increasing number of men and women who wanted 
 to read books, and who were not educated up to the high 
 standard of literature and scholarship of the preceding age. 
 Dryden and his contemporaries, if they made style barer, also 
 relieved it of many deformities, and kept up its harmony with 
 the changing taste of the day, a harmony on which alone any 
 sure foundation for national literature can be laid. These men 
 made the writings and thoughts of the i8th century possible. 
 Hooker is always addressing divines, Bacon always men of 
 learning ; Dryden is the first to address men of moderate educa- 
 tion, practical and busy men of the world. And the men of the 
 world aided the change which was going on. Conversation 
 became an art; the age of drawing-rooms, and of the elegant 
 discussion supposed to be inseparable from that species of 
 chamber, set in : and, especially after the first excesses of the 
 . Restoration had passed off, indecent ideas began 
 
 of antithetic'sty'ie! to be Veiled Under some pretence of decorum in 
 
 speech. The prose writers of this time had a 
 magnificent inheritance in the literature of the past, and they 
 began accordingly to gather up the ideas of that literature, to 
 polish them, and to adapt them to the style of conversation then 
 current. 
 
 Mr. George Saints- ^^^- Saintsbury, in his newly-published sketch 
 fury's lofty claims of Dryden, claims for him a higher merit even 
 ^ ™' than the precedence in tliis literary change. He 
 
 declares that Dryden and Tillotson, working contemporaneously 
 and in widely different fields of literature, really created the first 
 English prose style, and averted the dangers which might have 
 ensued from the involved constructions of the preceding writers. 
 This seems to be rather an extravagant claim, and the danger to 
 be rather imaginary: Dryden purified but he did not create 
 English prose. His most obvious work lies chiefly in the fact 
 that whereas up to his time every one had written in different 
 styles he laid down the broad lines which became the common 
 foundation for all English writers to work upon. Every one 
 of his successors wrote like Dryden for a considerable period, 
 until one by one the great leaders of the literary world modified 
 and left their mark upon the language. Bolingbroke, Johnson, 
 and Burke, all performed, in a much smaller degree and in 
 
English Prose Style. 15 
 
 widely diverse directions, the work which Dryden had been 
 the first to inaugurate. 
 
 The most lasting of Dryden;s prose works are ^ryden's criticism., 
 beyond doubt his literary criticisms. He was not 
 a systematic feeder in the fields of earlier literature, but rather 
 a critic by accident. The prefaces which he added to his plays 
 are models of good working English as far removed from any 
 exaggerated flights of rhetoric on the one hand as from any 
 excessive use of coUoquiahsms on the other. Of a similar nature 
 is his " Essay on Dramatic Poesy," which was published in 1665, 
 and is thus one of the earliest specimens of the new style. The 
 occasional insertion of a harmless colloquialism or trifling touch 
 of pathos betray the hand of the man who is already master both 
 of his thoughts and of his pen. Swift and Thackeray alone excel 
 Dryden in this peculiar excellence. No one can throw in a 
 political allusion with more effect except Swift himself. The 
 prefaces to Dryden's later works, such as " Religio Laici," the 
 translations of the Aeneid, and the dedication of his Tables, are 
 among the most perfect of his specimens of prose. And yet with 
 all this excellence it is extremely doubtful if he would ever have 
 written a line of prose had he not been forced to affix prefatory 
 notices to his dramas and translations, and to play the part of a 
 literary critic in the dearth of any great demand for original 
 literature. 
 
 From Dryden we pass almost at once to the 
 
 6. -^ c lA • c r\ A i-T. Connection between 
 
 rst writers of the reign of Queen Anne, the men Dryden & Addison. 
 
 who listened with reverence to the old Hterary 
 lion in Wills' Coffee-house. There was indeed a direct and actual 
 connection between the work of Dryden and Addison'; but we 
 must first glance at Sir William Temple, one of 
 the earliest types of the school of the future. " ' '^"^ '""?'• 
 In reading the works of this " statesman turned pedant" we are 
 in no danger of being over-excited or carried away into an un- 
 critical enthusiasm : we shall not be led to form hasty judgments 
 or to shut our eyes to the facts of history. The chief fear for a 
 nineteenth cgntury reader would be lest a certain drowsiness 
 should be brought on by the monotonous smoothness of the 
 periods, by the painful trimness of the verbiage ; we can fancy 
 the author wandering with a volume of the classics in his hand, 
 through the green alleys of Moor Park, and smiling complacently 
 at the thought that he who had been the counsellor of a Tory 
 king and the friend of a Whig king had found metal more attrac- 
 tive in the designing of Dutch gardens and smooth sentences of 
 English prose. 
 
 = The latter is said to have written the preface to the Translation of the 
 Georgics, usually believed to have been Dryden's \Saintsbury\. 
 
1 6 The Development of 
 
 With all the trimness of morality and literature 
 ^e'kriyT?trce°ntu*! which men like Temple displayed to the world, 
 the opening of the i8th century was a heartless 
 age, an age without real religious life and without any deep in- 
 tellectual life. One is sometimes tempted to think that the worst 
 excesses of Charles II.'s early years were preferable to the cold 
 and polished treachery both public and private with which 
 London Society was honey-combed in the reigns of William and 
 Twoinfluenceswhich ^nne. But there were _ two influences which 
 rescued society and savcd both society and literature from dying of 
 itcrature. moral inanition ; the first of these was the 
 
 splendid eloquence of the higher divines of the English 
 Church, the successors of the great preachers of the age of 
 Charles I., men like South, Barrow, Tillotson, Burnet, and 
 Sherlock, whose reasonable and practical Christianity gradually 
 brought about a regeneration of morality ; the other was the rise 
 of a new set of models of style in the Parliamentary speeches, of 
 which rumours began to be heard beyond the walls of St. Stephen's 
 for the first time in the reign of Queen Anne. There is no doubt 
 that though the eloquence of the pulpit and of the House of 
 Commons operated but slowly in improving the style of prose 
 writing on matters unconnected with Church or Parliament, yet 
 they did operate in the long run in leading prose onwards from 
 the cold and polished beauties of the style of Dryden and 
 Addison to the more natural and forcible yet not less lofty forms 
 of expression which were used by Burke. 
 
 „, „ . . But this is anticipating the change which was 
 
 J.he Jisiayists. , ^ i i i i .^ , 
 
 only gradual throughout the i8th century. I am 
 not inclined to estimate very highly the style of the essayists of 
 the reign of Queen Anne ; they have not left their mark upon the 
 language to any great extent ; they did not aim at educating but 
 only at amusing, because the contemporary public did not demand 
 education so much as amusement; and I do not think that, with 
 Addison ^^ exception of Addison, their influence was 
 
 a highly moral one. His mind is indeed 
 thoroughly brought before us in his style ; cold ar;d cultivated, 
 he is the man of success who has little pity for his erring 
 brother who is not equally fortunate in the race of life. 
 His essays are always fascinating to read, but one cannot help 
 feeling that they were written by a man who had known little 
 of the trials of the world, and who if he had any deep feelings, 
 knew it to be his duty to crush them beneath an impassible 
 Steele cxtcrior. Steele's mind is a more attractive 
 
 one, but he is in style a writer far less 
 careful than Addison, and is even at times slipshod and unculti- 
 vated. But if they are neither of them models for imitation, 
 which at one time it would have been the rankest heresy to assert, 
 yet they form together with Swift and Defoe a distinct link in the 
 
English Prose Style. 17 
 
 literary chain, and display several marked steps of advance 
 beyond their predecessors. 
 
 Prose reached in the powerful pens of the two -^^^^ ^^ g^j^^ 
 last-named writers a greater pitch of influence on 
 the Government of England than it has attained at any other 
 period of our history. These were the men who gave our litera- 
 ture its political cast, who made pamphlet writing ^he political nature 
 a very important factor in the Stale: henceforward of English litera- 
 the party which could claim the services of an '"°' 
 able pamphleteer would sooner have given up the head of its 
 leader than the pen of its drudge. All work like this being done 
 hastily naturally contributed little in matter to our store of 
 valuable writings, but it certainly had a great influence in de- 
 termining the direction which was to be followed in the develop- 
 ment of style. Literature as a factor in politics is now-a-days 
 much overwhelmed by mere force of what are called " brute 
 votes;" and the wider the suffrage is extended, the less in- 
 fluence literature will possess, unless indeed education progresses 
 at a rate proportionately faster than concessions to the spirit of 
 democracy : but even upon the very brute votes themselves 
 literature — the literature of the newspaper — does exercise an 
 influence the direct origin of which can be traced back to the 
 articles in the " Review " and the " Examiner," to pamphlets like 
 the " Conduct of the Allies," and satires like the " True-born 
 Englishman." The style of the newspaper is 
 
 ° .. , ■' . . ^ .*■ Newspaper style. 
 
 necessarily a popular one ; repetition is not 
 avoided, forcible expressions are introduced, and at the same 
 time, newspaper and pamphlet writing, being intended for effect, 
 must be free from all errors in diction, must be full of allusions 
 to passing events, full even of personalities ; and in short must 
 be " trenchant," " slashing." 
 
 It is this quahty of English prose which we g^.^.^ 
 
 owe to Defoe, and still more to Swift. Defoe 
 was a hasty writer, and never corrected his sheets ; Swift took 
 infinitely more pains, and his labours were crowned with infinitely 
 greater success. An instance of the immense power of such a 
 style is the plain fact that Swift produced a Tory reaction in the 
 middle of a Whig war, the most triumphant that England had 
 ever been engaged in. This power was due to Swift's extra- 
 ordinarily pictorial manner, to his mastery of literal, vivid, and 
 coarse description. Carlyle is the only writer who has exercised 
 an influence similar to that of Swift and Defoe, with minute 
 detailed accounts of events. M. Taine speaks of the way in 
 which Swift "decomposes" a subject into its elements. The 
 pleasure which we derive from reading " Gulliver" — a pleasure 
 which even all the loathsomeness of the book cannot destroy — is 
 akin to that derived from "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sartor 
 Resartus," We can hardly believe that the author has not been 
 
1 8 The Development of 
 
 an eye-witness of the details which he describes. Swift, Defoe, 
 and Carlyle, " lie like truth." 
 
 The connecting linkbetween authors of the age of 
 o mg ro e. ^nne and authors of the age of our grandfathers is 
 
 Lord Bolingbroke, whose earlier years were connected with schemes 
 of re-establishing his own supremacy in England through a restora- 
 tion of the old royal family, and whose later years were spent, like 
 those of Macchiavelli, in discontented retirement among books and 
 agricultural pursuits, for which he possessed as little aptitude as his 
 great Florentine antitype. He was a philosopher by compulsion, 
 who would have been all his life an orator if he had been more 
 fortunate in his schemes. He belonged when he wrote his 
 philosophical and political works, both in spirit and in style, to 
 the days which were gone, although he lived far into the time 
 during which Johnson was working as a literary hack for Cave. 
 He is only important, with regard to his influence on the pro- 
 gressive development of style, because his speeches in Parliament, 
 of which we unfortunately possess no remains, were looked back to 
 in the days of Chatham and Burke as " more priceless than the 
 " lost fragments of antiquity." As a matter of fact, upon the 
 development of genuine prose writing, oratory by itself can 
 „ ,. „ exercise but an external influence. In those 
 
 Parliamentary Oratory. , . ., i ■ t^ i- 
 
 days especially, speeches in Farhament were 
 addressed rather to the ear than to the eye; and to the ears only 
 of those actually present when they were spoken ; hence tautology, 
 tricks of phrase, tricks of manner, inoxpia-is were of much more 
 importance than a lucid practical style, such as is considered the 
 perfection of prose writing, and such as is now addressed even 
 from the benches of the Houses of Parliament to the audience of 
 the nation. However carefully considered a speech might be 
 beforehand, words might always be dropped during the debate 
 which would cause the speaker to shift his ground, or oblige him 
 to alter some cherished aphorism, which would spoil the whole 
 effect of the declamation. It is for this reason that oratory, 
 whether in the law courts or in a Parliamentary assembly, can 
 never, as a perfect model of style, enter into competition with 
 works composed in solitude with a pen in the author's hand. 
 There was indeed a period of transition, before Parliamentary 
 reporting attained its present efficiency — namely the latter years of 
 the 1 8th century — during which the great efforts of oratory as we 
 now possess them^for instance those of Burke — were handed 
 down to posterity in the form in which they were transcribed 
 before delivery. Now-a-days some speeches suffer as much as 
 others gain at the hands of reporters ; but in the great press of 
 business, which every year presses more hardly upon our legislators, 
 men have discovered, that the finest speech that could be made 
 could iiot change a single vote. It is well that it should be so: 
 there is more danger of party action in an assembly where the 
 
English Prose Style. rg 
 
 tongue of the orator bears a triumphant sway, than in one to which 
 the deciding body conies with its mind made up beforehand, even 
 though it is blindly following the call of a party leader or its own 
 rooted prejudice : this statement is sufficiently proved true by 
 the perversions of justice in Ancient Athens and Modern France. 
 But in the early days of English forensic oratory, it was probably 
 not so j when St. John spoke the influence exercised by his 
 pleading was probably much greater than it could have been after 
 Walpole's systematic corruption had done its work. 
 
 The most able criticism of the i8th century 
 was Johnson's ; he may be called in fact the first ^^""''' J°'"'=°"- 
 really systematic critic of English literature; for, although his 
 remarks on other authors are scattered all about 
 his own miscellaneous writings, it may be con- The first professional 
 fidently stated that he made criticism his pro- 
 fession, and earned his living by it. He is an important link in 
 the chain of English prose writers, for he is the first author whose 
 whole thoughts were turned to the works of his predecessors. 
 Modern literature may be said to have a double function, 
 production, and criticism ; and great as have been the efforts of 
 the Victorian age in the former direction, its chief 
 work has lain in the latter. It is only now that Value of criticism, 
 we are learning the full value of our great English classical 
 authors ; and Samuel Johnson was the founder of this art of 
 criticism. In accordance with the still somewhat measured and 
 pedantic ideas of his day, his studies were directed chiefly to 
 giving judgments on style rather than on matter, for prose writing, 
 despite the dictum of the great sage himself with which I have 
 ventured to commence this essay, was still chiefly valued for 
 beauties of style. It was not practised by any means in so narrow 
 a spirit, and Johnson's contemporaries, Goldsmith and Burke, 
 were the most powerful agents in breaking down the conventional 
 barriers. 
 
 Johnson adopted Swift's definition of good , , . 
 poetical style — "the use of proper words in J° "5°" = °*" "y=- 
 proper places " as a canon of criticism for good prose style also ; 
 but his own style, although it was probably laboriously formed so 
 as to be true to this rule, strikes a modern reader as too conscious 
 an effort — too over-burdened with Latinisms, and phrases which 
 are only intelligible to cultivated men, to suit the new era which 
 was beginning to dawn. His own defence of such a style, even if 
 he had lived much later, would be, that great dignity was 
 necessary for prose composition. In accordance with this idea he 
 set himself to purify the English language, and thought that he 
 had, by his importation of new and rejection of old phrases, 
 considerably added to its beauty. One of the most effective 
 tricks of style which was introduced by him was, the laying down 
 
 c 
 
20 The Development of 
 
 of one brief dictum on a subject first, and the subsequent amplifi- 
 cation in one or more longer sentences. In this he has been most 
 happily imitated by Macaulay. This is often useful for purposes 
 of exposition, but it also shews at times a tendency towards 
 artificial bolstering, which ought always to be avoided Beyond 
 a few mannerisms of this kind, and his use in some^ of his com- 
 positions of an excessive quantity of Latinism, there seems to be 
 little reason for the coining of such an upleasing word as 
 " Johnsonese." The name was really given rather to what was 
 believed to be the style of his conversation rather than to any- 
 thing which he gave to the world in print. He was one of the 
 few people who talked even more pompously than they wrote. 
 
 , „ , No really new era in English prose was inaugurated 
 
 Edmund Burke. , ^,-'-_, ,9 r-R«-T» • i 
 
 by Edmund Burke, although Mr. Payne m the 
 prefaces to his two volumes of " Selections from Burke " would 
 fain have us beUeve the contrary.e A truer estimate of Burke is 
 given by De Quincey when he calls him " the supreme writer of 
 the century." In the field of mere style Burke is indeed supreme, 
 and his writings mark the highest point reached by the high tide 
 of i8th century literature. It is only because in his slightly 
 visionary philanthropic schemes and speeches he belonged to a 
 future time, that Mr. Payne is led into believing that he inaugurated 
 the new epoch of literature in England, which rather began 
 contemporaneously with the active carrying out of those schemes, 
 some of which Burke's early liberalism had advocated. To 
 eulogise too highly Burke's beauty of language would be im- 
 possible ; his use of metaphors is as abundant and varied as could 
 be desired, and yet these are always kept from running wild. In 
 pathos he is unrivalled, or rivalled only by Thackeray ; in passion 
 his notes are really like those of a thrilling musical instrument. 
 Though he is advisedly jocose at times, it is with a somewhat 
 lumbering jocosity, and he is never really humorous ; we must not 
 look for humour in a man who was so entirely out of harmony with 
 his contemporaries, and so generally unfortunate in his political 
 career as Burke was. Mr. Payne describes Burke's writings as a 
 mixture of Bolingbroke's splendour with Johnson's common sense. 
 This is fair and good, and it is, perhaps, the highest praise that 
 can be bestowed upon an author of that time. It is well known 
 
 f It is only in liis earlier writings that Johnson is over Latinised in style. 
 "Rasselas" was written in 1759, and that marks the change to a more 
 Teutonic idiom. The "Lives of the Poets" is havdly more Latinised than the 
 writings of his contemporaries. 
 
 S; Mr. Payne goes so far as to say that we are indebted to Burke for the 
 "Saturday Review" style; that he introduced a fresher and more natural 
 diction; that he was to prose what Wordsworth was to poetry. "He fell 
 naturally into that manner which was adapted to take hold of the practical 
 English mind, and he brought that manner at once lo perfection." — \Select 
 Works, p. xxxiv. Intro. 'I 
 
English Prose Style. 21 
 
 that he modelled his early publication, " A Vindication of Nat ural 
 Society," closely on the style of Bolingbroke, 
 whose deism it was meant to satirise. The ^efea'Dn'mCTlturi" 
 " Vindication " professed to be written " by a 
 late noble Lord," and many admirers of Bolingbroke, besides most 
 of his enemies, fell into the net which the young writer had so 
 cunningly spread. Burke is attractive to modern taste because 
 he speaks to his readers more from a footing of equality than any 
 contemporary writer ; he appeals as from man to man, and he 
 appeals with the most persuasive eloquence, with the most easy 
 fluency ; it would seem at first sight impossible to resist his fasci- 
 nations. We possess in Burke's own words a description of his 
 education in eloquence. He made himself a speaker by steeping 
 himself in the words of the great clasical authors of the English 
 language no less than of those of antiquity. He tells that it was 
 from the splendid pulpit orators of the 17th century that he 
 learned his earliest lessons. But his command of language and 
 acquaintance with good models was such that he could imitate 
 now one now another of his great predecessors with indifference 
 almost with unconsciousness. He talked, we know, as he wrote, 
 and declaimed passionately. Johnson speaks of the dramatic 
 character of Burke's conversation ; if he is dramatic, it is because 
 the theatre was in his day, what it has since ceased to be, a great 
 school of life, manners, and even of rhetoric. This is why Burke 
 spoke so much of admiring Plautus and Terence. Bolingbroke 
 was still more truly a dramatic writer as he was a more dramatic 
 personage altogether. 
 
 Why then with all these advantages in favour of Burke is there 
 always something which makes one sigh as one reads his finest 
 speeches ? It is because, as I said above, the orator is out of 
 harmony with his age. We place ourselves unconsciously on the 
 ministerial benches, and feel with Mr. Pitt that all this magnificent 
 rhetoric will not need an answer. Mr. Payne is wrong when he 
 says that Burke had anything in common with the practical 
 English mind. He may have been, he often was, more noble 
 than his contemporaries, but the work of the world has fallen, and 
 perhaps happily, to politicians hke Pitt rather than to orators and 
 visionaries like Burke. I think the career of the latter is one of 
 the saddest in the whole of English history. 
 
 Two writers of very different style, both contemporaries of 
 Burke, may next be considered, — Edward Gibbon and Oliver 
 Goldsmith. A more complete contrast than exists between the 
 two could not be imagined. For writing Gibbon's style, as Mr. 
 Baeehot says,'' we may imagine as necessities, a ^, ^ „.^, 
 
 r . t t t-ir i_i • Ti Edward Gibbon. 
 
 comfortable arm-chair before a blazmg hbrary- 
 
 fire, with plenty of pens, clear ink, and fresh paper : the " Letters of 
 
 h Literary Studies—" Gibbon." 
 
2 2 The Development of 
 
 the Citizen of the world" might have been scrawled on the 
 edges of old news-sheets and the backs of unpaid bills. _ But it 
 would be wrong to condemn hastily the " ponderous majesty of 
 the philosophical historian of the Roman Empire," (Gibbon would 
 probably have described his own literary excellence in some such 
 terms), because we are more attracted by the delicate grace of 
 him " qui nihil tetigit quod non ornavit." Gibbon is never out of 
 livery ; " his style is typical," says Mr. Bagehot, in the same essay, 
 " of the age which could tolerate the petty ceremonies and pomps 
 of Versailles. His involutions and his attempts at humour are 
 painful, his sarcasms are malevolent and coarse, without piercing 
 the victim in a tender part. Events are darkly hinted at rather 
 than lucidly explained; and the most curious and exact knowledge 
 of the periods of which he treats — and such knowledge Gibbon 
 undoubtedly possessed — is unfortunately for posterity involved in 
 a succession of enigmatic clauses and lumbering rhetorical para- 
 graphs. But the worst fault of which Gibbon can be justly 
 accused is the not infrequent occurrence of slips in his grammatical 
 construction, such as are doubly censurable when committed by a 
 man who prided himself as much upon the classical balance of 
 his senfences as upon the classical purity of his diction. 
 
 . When we turn to Goldsmith we see the very 
 
 opposite of all this. The most thoughtful, the 
 most gentle, the most truly humourous of all the writers of his 
 age or of any age, he is, on the whole, the most attractive figure in 
 our literary history. He has touched every kind of composition, 
 history, poetry, drama, fiction, and criticism, and he has touched 
 them all with a master's hand. The greater part of his writings 
 were miscellaneous " hack work " for difierent booksellers, for his 
 engagements with these gentlemen usually terminated abruptly. 
 Goldsmith is an Addison with a rich vein of true poetry and true 
 compassion added. The pleasure derived from the style of his 
 writings is akin to that derived from reading the "Spectator ;" the later 
 writer is equally polished and more metaphorical, or rather his 
 metaphors are derived more from actual life than Addison's. We 
 feel that to him writing could have been no effort whatever, 
 whereas Addison must have sat down to compose his " Spectators" 
 much as he would to compose his beautiful Latin verses. Each is 
 the man 
 
 " Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes." 
 
 The difference between them lies in the spirit with which they 
 have looked upon these things. Goldsmith's humour and pathos 
 are both beyond all praise. Who has not been moved almost to 
 tears by the affecting comicality of Beau Tibbs ? Who would be 
 ashamed to confess that he has been upset by one or two passages 
 in that perfect little human epic, the Vicar of Wakefield ? The 
 description of London misery in the " I,etters of the Citizen of 
 
English Prose Style. 23 
 
 the World" proves conclusively that the art of pathetic touches lies 
 in their rarity. Goldsmith's mind was of such a happy equable 
 temperament that he avoided every trace of the sickly senti- 
 mentality which, it is to be feared, took the place of active 
 benevolence among some writers of the day.' He is at the head 
 of the novelists of the century; his pen was pure without the 
 pruderies which are apparent in the earlier leaders of the reaction 
 against Smollett and Fielding. In style, as in matter. Goldsmith's 
 armour is proof against all the arrows of criticism, yet no writer 
 was ever more careless of the estimation in which his works would 
 be held by posterity. 
 
 Among the authors of the period who do not 
 strictly speaking contribute to the development Letterwmmg. 
 of English prose literature, but of whom, as masters of their own 
 particular style, one cannot omit some notice, are „ 
 Horace Walpole and "Junius," who is usually °^^'^'^ ^^°°' 
 supposed to have been Sir Philip Francis. Letter writing can, as 
 a rule, as little as pamphlet writing, be considered as genuinely 
 model style, on account of the numerous allusions to people and 
 events, known perhaps only to the writer and the recipient of the 
 letter. Therefore epistolary correspondence is an art in itself, and 
 is not in any direct way connected with our subject. Of Walpole 
 one can only say that he considered correspondence one of the 
 necessary arts for a fine gentleman's education, and rather com- 
 placently reflected that he was the only professor of the art in 
 King George's dominions. Junius' violent attrcks 
 on the various public characters, who happened to 
 be of opposite political opinions to himself, or to have privately 
 offended him, are certainly something more than mere tetters. In 
 spirit they carry us back to the warfare of Milton and Salmasius : 
 in language and style they abound in the most polished phrases of 
 antitheses of which the Enghsh language is capable. But real 
 beauty of diction they want : they are hard and " glittering." 
 The author is as inferior to Burke in his diction — and it is 
 interesting to notice that Francis, and it is probable that Francis 
 and Junius are the same persons, actually accused Burke of 
 writing bad EnglishJ — as he is in loftiness of character: there is 
 no real flow of words in the letters ; we feel that they are too sur- 
 charged with venom to let the author's real meaning come to the 
 surface ; and a style in which much of the writer's mind is kept 
 back from appearing on his paper cannot be recommended for 
 imitation. 
 
 And • now the second great change in the 
 development of our prose literature is close at ^°'' "period.'"™'^ 
 hand. At the end of the i8th century, in the 
 
 ' e.g., Sterne — Miss Burney. 
 J Burke's Correspoudence, vol. iii. ja. 164. 
 
24 The Development of 
 
 intense excitement caused by the foreign war and the breaking up 
 all around us of the medieval conditions of Europe, we may see, 
 if we please to be fanciful, an analogy with the circumstances 
 which accompanied the first great change in the course of English 
 style. Now, as then, it seemed likely that the fabric of English 
 society would be overthrown, and that the reign of democracy in 
 our island, instead of being slowly matured in proportion to the 
 education of the people, would be inaugurated in the overwhelming 
 
 at a blow of that aristocratic constitution which 
 ^thrllLed hf En|l had Up till that time felt little indication of the 
 land at the end of coming change. Literature was dormant for a 
 century. -jvi^iiej for every one of the literary classes felt 
 that the possibility of a revolution was a serious matter : Burke 
 only raised his warning voice ; and his splendid " Reflections on 
 the French Revolution" was perhaps the one work of his which 
 was well received by the nation at the time of its publication. 
 When the reaction from this terror came in the opening years of 
 the present century, the awakening sense of a few daring members 
 of the Liberal party spoke out. Their voices inaugurated a new 
 period of English style as soon as the peace, and the prosperity 
 that followed on the peace, gave people leisure to demand a 
 literature suited to the new conditions of England. 
 
 . . IIL — In 1802 the "Edinburgh Review" was 
 
 first started, and this was the commencement of 
 the new era of English prose. This era may be termed the 
 educational period. Prose is no longer among the fine arts, no 
 longer a mere profession by which a scanty living can be picked 
 The prose literature '^Pi ^-^^d here and there great prizes obtained, but 
 °f '•!= Magazines has become a sober, active, and self-devoting factor 
 
 in the instruction of the English people. The 
 demand for literature of this class must have been infinitesimal at the 
 first appearance of the " Edinburgh Review," but had there been 
 no demand for such an appeal to a more extended audience there 
 could have been no supply. The Reviews have now become a 
 necessity of our age. Men have so little time to form judgments 
 for themselves that they must be told by authoritative and, as it 
 were, licensed public instructors " what to think." The 
 "Spectator" and the "Tatler" at the opening of the last cen- 
 tury were on a scale so much smaller, and were written for 
 such a much smaller society of men and books, — if one may be 
 permitted to use such an expression — that they had really little 
 effect in this direction. But they are, for all that, the parents of 
 the modern reviews and magazines, as much as Defoe's " Review" 
 and Swift's " Examiner" are the parents of modern newspapers. 
 
 The modern English style of prose writing — 
 '^'''wsty^l^'" the "Saturday Review" style— is lineally de- 
 scended from the style of the first Edinburgh 
 Rtviewers. It is considered by some great writers of the present 
 
English Prose Style. 25 
 
 day a deterioration from the style of Burke and of his contem- 
 poraries ; and as far as the use of beautiful phrases and metaphors, 
 and the exciting of the emotions of the readers by similar artifices 
 go, this accusation is quite true. But this is far from being a 
 cause of blame, if we regard the end of pure writing to be the 
 education of the people rather than the tickling of the senses of 
 the erudite. Plain facts are dressed by our best modern writers 
 in the most appropriate — that is the plainest — language. If the 
 sentences are not involved, and the syntax is perfectly clear, we 
 ask no more ; indeed we have time for no more in the busy life of 
 modern England. 
 
 The cool self-complacent style of the reviewer, 
 who is generally anonymous, is of course open to Danger^^of^ Review 
 censure ; but freedom of criticism is such an 
 inestimable benefit that it probably outweighs the unfortunate 
 results which may have attended it in some instances. Reviewers 
 have been accused of causing the death of sensitive poets'' : and 
 most people remember the famous commencement of an article on 
 Wordsworth in the "Edinburgh Review."' Such faults as these 
 communicate themselves along with the plain and practical style 
 of the Reviewers, even to writers like Macaulay, in their longer 
 works ; and to a greater or less degree to every prose writer of the 
 present day, with the exceptions of Mr. Ruskin and the late 
 Mr. Carlyle. These, as the apostles of quite new and quite other 
 doctrines of literature, T reserve for future consideration. It will 
 be necessary to say first a few words on the style of the great 
 leaders of this literary revolution, such as De Quincey and 
 Macaulay. 
 
 Francis Jeffrey and Sidney Smith are among 
 the most vigorous, Professor Wilson and Charles Reviewers" aid 
 Lamb among the most refined and contemplative, V'^l^ writere"™' 
 of the writers who consciously or unconsciously 
 have belonged to the new school, for it is a school which includes 
 within its boundaries all varieties of thought, manner, and ex- 
 pression. But the great representatives of the two extremes 
 which can live together within this pale are Thomas de Quincey 
 and Lord Macaulay. They are respectively the heads of the 
 " abstract school" and the " concrete school." 
 
 ^ " Who killed John Keats ?" 
 "I," says the Quarterly, 
 So savage and tartarly, 
 " 'Twas one of my feats !" 
 
 Byron, Letter to Murtay, \%z\, July 30th. 
 
 (This is attributed in the letter in jest to Shelley. " Are you aware," says 
 Byron, " that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and accuses the 
 ' Quarterly' of killing him ?") 
 
 ' " This will ns\ex Ao," Edinliurgh Revieiv, November, 1814, vol. xxiv. p. i. 
 
2 6 The Development of 
 
 Thomas deQuincey. The former of these had a perfect genius for 
 The 'abstract' school Writing about the most trivial subjects in the 
 ofstyie. jjjQg^ perspicuous and lively language. He 
 
 possessed a mind steeped in the classical literature of Greece 
 and Rome, but he infinitely preferred to the masterpieces of 
 these languages the writings of the English Augustan age of 
 the early 17th century: he devoted himself to the study of 
 various styles with the greatest care ; and yet with all these 
 qualifications for being a mere stylist, a mere survival of the 
 "Classic age," he is an essentially modern writer; that_is,_he 
 writes for the third period of English audiences. The fact is that 
 it came perfectly natural to him to write as he did ; there is no 
 smile of satisfaction on his face as he puts down a curiously 
 turned sentence, for all his thoughts seem to have presented 
 themselves to him slightly inverted. It was, perhaps, rather 
 a misfortune that a man who had such power of expression, 
 together with such a wide range of reading as De Quincey, should 
 have such an obhquity of intellect. The obliquity of itself is not 
 uncommon ; but it is uncommon to find it in company with the 
 other qualities. His writings are never pleasing to a vigorous 
 mind, for the reason that there is a temptation to regret that these 
 magnificent powers existed in combination with such inability for 
 real seriousness of purpose. But his criticism and his lighter 
 articles were all employed to some extent for the object of the 
 magazine writers of the period ; they served to combine amuse- 
 ment with instruction, and were useful ingredients in the pot-poiirri 
 of a Review. 
 
 De Quincey 's great fault is that he is too fond of putting on 
 paper abstract ideas ; he will nearly alwaj s explain them, if they 
 are obscure, afterwards, for he will not willingly leave his readers 
 in ignorance of anything which he knows himself ; but still it is 
 a grave fault in style to make too constant a use either of abstrac- 
 tions or the reverse. He is melodious and even in his language ; 
 exceedingly tranquil and contemplative in his sentences ; careful 
 to explain to an uneducated reader the meaning of a quotation, to 
 repeat in a different form a statement which appears the least 
 involved. He is humorous to the verge of absurdity, pathetic to 
 the verge of sentimentality, according as his strangely constituted 
 physical nature impels him to laugh or to weep ; he is extraor- 
 dinarily " felicitous " in the words that occur to his mind, and 
 though sparing of metaphor, when he does use one it is sure to be 
 striking and illuminating to the reader. Let us take one short 
 instance of his command over the refinements, both metaphorical 
 and direct, of the English language. 
 
 "So thick a curtain of manners is drawn over the features and 
 " expression of men's natures, that to the ordinary observer the 
 " two extremities and the infinite field of varieties which lie 
 " between them are all confounded, the vast and multitudinous 
 
English Prose Style. 27 
 
 " compass of their several harmonies reduced to the meagre outline 
 " of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary 
 "sounds." {Confessions, p. 34). 
 
 This passage may not seem to be particularly likely to be 
 clear to the uneducated reader, but it is in the succeeding 
 sentences so carefully illustrated and explained that it may 
 be taken as typical of his " educational " style. There is no 
 sententiousness about his work, which one would be tempted to 
 think on a hasty review was the case. But he acted as a powerful 
 influence in preventing English prose literature from becoming 
 vulgarised, which is a very possible consequence of an exceed- 
 ingly popular style. He kept off colloquialisms and Americanisms, 
 and (to use a colloquialism which he would have abhorred) put 
 a " drag " on his contemporaries. 
 
 Macaulay, though he is careful to avoid Lg^d Macauiay. 
 vulgarity, was the very opposite of a thoughtful The concrete school 
 writer. His own command over the English of^'y'^- 
 language was scarcely less than De Quincey's, and he also wrote 
 for the purpose of instructing his readers. Unfortunately he did 
 not always make sure of his facts, enough to carry this purpose 
 into effect. He is the writer who represents to M. Taine the best 
 type of English men of letters ; one can easily imagine the 
 impression which a Frenchman of liberal opinions would derive 
 from Macaulay's brilliant and often flippant generalisations. This 
 fault of his is well illustrated by Mr. Bagehot — a modern critic, 
 himself sometimes nearly as flippant as Macaulay himself — when 
 he says that the sweeping criticisms which we meet with in the 
 "Essays " are " not suited to such a being as man in such a world 
 " as the present." Certainly they are eminently unsuited to such 
 a task as the writing of history. 
 
 But we are not concerned with criticism of the matter of 
 Macaulay's works ; and his language and style has always been 
 accepted as a standard of excellence since his death. When a 
 Reviewer wishes to describe the ambition of a youthful stylist, he 
 says, " This man fancies himself a Macaulay." His name will 
 always be connected with the most fascinating series of letters that 
 has been published in the present century. His speeches in the 
 House of Commons are remembered as the most vehement and 
 persuasive, except those of Burke and Canning, of any that 
 have been uttered since Parliamentary oratory has been 
 addressed to the audience of the nation. And to the most 
 pleasure-seeking reader an essay of his will always be as 
 delightful " pabulum " as the best novel conceivable. This 
 power of Macaulay's style over all classes of minds is owing 
 entirely to the vivid manner in which he represents events to 
 the eyes of his readers ; to his abjuration of all abstractions, 
 and his choice of concrete expressions. We feel that he has 
 acted through to himself the scenes which he describes ; that he 
 
28 The Development of 
 
 might have lived among the men and women of the court of 
 Charles II., and been present at the secret negotiations of the 
 leaders of the country party. Alas ! a closer acquaintance with 
 the original authorities dissipates this delightful sensation of confi- 
 dence, and it is for this reason that Macaulay is so dangerous a 
 writer, and that his statements are to be so carefully divested of 
 their adventitious ornament before ^/e can meet them in a 
 properly critical spirit. 
 
 He is master of one particular literary weapon, namely the 
 short sentence ; he does not treat us to long periods, whether of 
 plainer or obscurer meaning, but he astonishes us with a series of 
 brilliant rushes or sallies following close upon each other, often 
 epexegetical, and often merely of the same force one with another. 
 Frequently he will argue in this manner for some time, and then 
 introduce at the end of a string of such sentences the one for 
 which all that preceded have been merely a preparation. For 
 instance ; — 
 
 " Some states have been enabled by their geographical position 
 " to defend themselves with advantage against immense force. 
 " The sea has repeatedly protected England against the fury of 
 " the whole contment. The Venetian government driven from its 
 " possessions on the land, could still bid defiance to the confede- 
 " rates of Cambray from the Arsenal amidst the lagoons. More 
 " than one great and well-appointed army, which regarded the 
 " peasants of Switzerland as an easy prey, has perished in the 
 " passes of the Alps. Frederick had no such advantage." ™ 
 
 And then follows a fresh series of sentences explanatory of the 
 deficiences of the Prussian kingdom. In pursuing this method 
 Macaulay nearly always distributes the "protasis" and "apodosis" 
 between two sentences. He makes less use of conjunctions than 
 any other writer ; his mood is always the indicative. It is most 
 truly a very readable if a very dangerous style. 
 
 Between these two opposite poles of modern English style, 
 Macaulay and de Quincey, the dashing and the contemplative, the 
 concrete and the abstract, every variety and shade of writing may 
 be found. Those authors are most to be admired who steer a 
 middle course between the two, avoiding the faults of each. It is 
 quite possibly to write as pure and as constructive English as 
 de Quincey wrote without following too closely his excessively 
 abstract manner of expressing himself. I do not feel equally sure 
 that it is easy to compose with anything Hke Macaulay's brilliancy 
 and make sure at the same time of the ground traversed. The 
 leading articles in many of the London papers are a striking 
 example of an attempt to be "trenchant" which cannot be said 
 to be very successful. 
 
 Essay on Frederick the Great. 
 
English Prose Style. 29 
 
 But most of the great writers of the last genera- 
 tion, and still more those of the present, have Novelists, 
 been in their apprenticeship to literature, contributors to perio- 
 dicals." I have not touched much upon the development of 
 the style of the English novel, partly because I cannot speak from 
 a close acquaintance with the great novelists of the last century, 
 and partly because fiction is not a very enduring nor very important 
 part of our literature. 
 
 It is of its very nature transient, and the taste 
 for it transient, and to a certain extent un- F'^jon as a recog- 
 
 T. T 1 i_ ._ ^1 . ^ nisable kind of prose. 
 
 iLnglish ; but there are one or two great writers of 
 this century who have been, through their works of fiction, guides 
 and leaders of the national taste. Such are Sir Walter Scott, 
 Dickens, and Thackeray. In fiction, more than in any other kind 
 of composition, the mind of the author is reflected on his pages. 
 In each of these men this rule is fully exemplified. 
 Sir Walter Scott, one might say, is rather too ^" ^^"" ^'°"- 
 fond of abstract ideas (as is not unusually the case among 
 his countrymen), his syntax is cumulative rather than con- 
 structive or antithetical ; his metaphors are homely ; but to 
 most people it would seem as vain and almost as impious to 
 attempt to comment on the style of the Waverley Novels as to 
 criticise Holy Writ. The only judgment that can be passed upon 
 them is this : they have afforded greater pleasure to a larger 
 circle of English readers than any book which has ever been 
 published in our language ; they have ennobled and refined the 
 national taste ; they have reconciled the most scrupulous puritans 
 to fiction, a work which not even Goldsmith was able to accom- 
 plish ; and they have done all this as much through the charm of 
 their style as through their matter. Their humour is indeed of 
 that open and lively nature, which even those who would miss all 
 the meaning of the satire of Thackeray cannot fail to appreciate ; 
 and their pathos is equally persuasive because it appeals to feehngs 
 common to every human being. 
 
 When we approach the other two great novelists j^j^j^^^ j^nr., , 
 we have no such universal admiration to take the "^ ^°^ ^"^ ^^^^' 
 place of criticism. Neither of them are writers whose books are 
 a treasured possession of every English household. Some people 
 cannot bear to read a line of one, some of the other : indeed, as 
 was said of the disciples of two famous philosophers of antiquity, 
 the world might be divided into those who appreciate Thackeray 
 and those who appreciate Dickens. The pathos and the humour 
 of each is extolled by then respective admirers as the most wonderful 
 in all literature. 
 
 M. I'aine is, I think, on the whole, fair in esti- Djckens 
 
 mating the respective merits of the two styles ; 
 
 " A notable instance of a man whose style has been thus formed is Cardinal 
 Ntviman. [See his articles in the "British Quarterly."] 
 
30 \Th,e Development of 
 
 although to the ears of a disciple his praise of Thackeray seems 
 too qualified. He shews well that Dickens' was an excitable, 
 poetical, " elegiac " temperament, with a strong obliquity of 
 perception and a strong taste for paradox ; that consequently he 
 is always hurrying his audience into laughter and tears on subjects, 
 which seem to minds, which cannot fall in with these peculiar 
 trains of thought, unworthy of such excitement. The audience, 
 however, if they happen to be at all excitable, cannot help giving 
 way, as the Dramatic Power and word painting of Dickens is so 
 great that it takes them by storm. Those people who do not give 
 way at all will in all probability shudder as much at the hideous 
 grotesque scene as at those of the audience who are bowing 
 down and worshipping. This dramatic power, then, in 
 Dickens, was infinite, and he had explored such peculiar scenes, 
 and made himself acquainted with such peculiar characters 
 (all of which he distorted in his own fancy through the peculiar 
 " obliquity of intellect "), that he needs no beauty of thought to 
 produce effect on his audience. Where he does see beauty it is 
 quite a different kind from that which anyone else would see; it 
 consists in the details of that which is unobserved in the hurry of , 
 ordinary life. He is the Hogarth of hterature as well in his 
 awful realism, his love for detail, of which nobody else will take 
 account, as in his compassion for the oppressed and his burning 
 vials of wrath poured upon the head of the oppressor. 
 
 Thackeray is in the most perfect contrast to 
 ' ^'^ ^^'^^' this man ; though he, too, has a hatred of oppres- 
 
 sion, his invective against it is concealed under a cynical smile. 
 It is more effective, for depraved people hate polished ridicule 
 more than stinging abuse. But Thackeray does not concern 
 himself with the same kind of depravity as Dickens : he aims less 
 at open sin, and more at ostentation and meanness ; consequently 
 his style is more refined, and makes its effect more by a single 
 cutting remark in the middle of much amiable laughter, than by 
 page after page of heart-rending description of the miseries which 
 sin entails upon the world. His periods are thus more polished 
 and flowing ; his cynical smile is ever on his lips, and yet that 
 smile covers infinite tenderness for the whole human family. 
 M. Taine cannot see this hidden meaning, nor the depth of 
 Thackeray's mind, which he admits to be singularly well culti- 
 vated, singularly acute, and free from any trace of obliquity. 
 Thackeray does not delight in paradox ; he does not seek for 
 victims and proteges in "Nooks and Corners of Character;" 
 his subjects are the men and women of the higher classes of 
 English Society ; and he exposes their weaknesses with a ludicrous 
 gravity, which is beyond anything else, in the way of satire, 
 effective. No one after reading his books would dare to descend 
 to one of those little tricks which he has shewn up so mercilessly. 
 His pathos, because entirely true to human nature, and because in 
 
English Prose Style. 31 
 
 its outward expression very rare, is unrivalled, and there runs too 
 throughout all his works a tender unexpressed pity for the frailties 
 of man, which was the result of no conscious effort of style, but 
 rather a peculiar habit of mind which never left him. 
 
 Articles for the newspapers or magazines are 
 now nearly always the first thing to which a "^p?"ent day. *° 
 novice in literature turns his hand. They are 
 necessarily hasty, but they are obliged to be correct in the main 
 as to the facts, and correct also in style, for there is a host of 
 critics constantly on the watch for any slip in the Two writers in oppo- 
 paces of a contemporary. This style of writing sitiontotheprevaii- 
 develops great fluency and ease in the use of the '"g'^''«° ' « ^y- 
 pen, but it also tends to stifle any very exact or laborious thought. 
 There are, however, two great masters of the English language — if 
 not of style — who have set their faces against the prevailing taste 
 of the day. The one is Mr. Ruskin, the other alas ! the late 
 Mr. Carlyle. Each of these writers is at the head of a small 
 school of cultivated men, but both are out of harmony with the 
 present line of development of English prose, which up to their 
 time has been continuous in one direction. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's style is varied, sweet, and j^^ Ruskin 
 
 musical ; he avows in one of his prefaces that he 
 conscientiously endeavoured to imitate the rhythmical cadences of 
 Hooker; he charms us every now and then by some beautiful 
 metaphor fresh gathered from nature. Such metaphors, his chief 
 subject, art criticism, enables him to introduce with great effect. 
 For instance take the following quotation from his lecture on 
 Tuscan art : — 
 
 " And instead of this decorative evangelical preacher of a lion 
 " with staring eyes and its paw on a gospel, he carves you a quite 
 " brutal and maternal lioness, with affectionate eyes and paw set 
 "on her cub."° 
 
 The idea here is very beautiful, and it brings the picture of the 
 lioness in the Pisan pulpit very vividly before our eyes : but it is 
 not a chaste style ; there is too great a tendency to accumulate 
 epithets, and too free a use of adverbs, to make the passage 
 altogether pleasing to a modern ear. Together with this anti- 
 quated delight in piling up epithets, Mr. Ruskin combines a 
 peculiarly colloquial turn of sentence ; he is fond of reasoning by 
 means of a conjunction like "then" placed at the end of an 
 argument. For lecturing in public, no one who has not heard his 
 lectures can form any idea of the delight which this style affords to 
 the ears of those who listen reverently ; but as a mere question of 
 prose style one cannot help feeling that his writings are at once 
 too colloquial in construction and too antiquated in language to 
 be a valuable addition to the chain of our English authors, 
 
 ° Val d'Arno, p. 12. 
 
32 The Development of 
 
 Expressions like the " preacher of a lion," above quoted, and also 
 such Germanisms as " quite brutal," " entirely holy," are decidedly 
 foreign to the genius of the English language. Mr. Ruskin him- 
 self would probably say that the style of the present day needs 
 reform, and reform in the direction of reaction towards the great 
 EUzabethan models ; but his own free use of colloquialisms has 
 prevented him from effecting any such reform even if he has 
 desired to do so. 
 
 The question, " What is the influence of Mr. 
 Mr.Cariyie. Carlyle's style on the development of English 
 
 prose ? " is closely connected with a still more important question : 
 " To what end is EngHsh prose style now tending? " 
 
 Is it preserving a plain and practical but chaste 
 'America''on"dktion!^ diction and Constructive syntax, or is it wandering 
 in the direction of loose Americanisms in dic- 
 tion and in syntax towards the German models of which Mr. 
 Carlyle is an avowed admirer ? On the score of diction, then, in 
 answer to these questions, there does seem to be some occasion 
 for fear lest our language may be corrupted by an influx of those 
 peculiar loose words and phrases, which are classed as American- 
 isms ; tor instance, " reliable" which is an ungrammatical word. Our 
 isolation from the continent is daily growing less and less marked, 
 and there is a decided tendency to admit into our conversation, 
 whence they will surely penetrate into our writings, a great many 
 foreign words, such for instance as " opportunism " and " parti- 
 cularism," two convenient political terms imported from France. 
 We use these words at first unconsciously with reference to the 
 concerns of other countries, but such will inevitably become 
 grafted upon the English language if ever an " opportunist" policy 
 should unfortunately become necessary in England.? But we 
 have a great many wisely pedantic guardians of our native tongue 
 who are ever crying out against these and similar abuses. 
 And the influence of With regard to Mr. Carlyle and the German 
 Germany on English Syntax the case IS different. M. Taine will not 
 syntax. |^g]p ^^ njuch here ; he is of course lost in amaze- 
 
 ment at such a peculiarly "Teutonic phenomenon" as Mr. Carlyle : 
 Mr. Carlyle as the ^^ gazes at him as at the relic of some primeval 
 instrument of this world \ but is far froiTi appreciating either the 
 mfluence. ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ j^j^ gcnius, or the true effect of his 
 
 writings on the development of English prose. That effect has 
 no doubt been very powerful, and Mr. Carlyle would fain have 
 had it more powerful still. The languages of England, France, 
 and Germany are represented at the present day by three distinct 
 styles. The French sentence is usually short, polished, anti- 
 thetical, contains only one proposition, and is of equal length 
 \vith the sentence that precedes and that which follows. It 
 
 p Some people would be inclined to say that English politics, or at least 
 English legislation, is always condacted on opportunist principles. 
 
English Prose Style 33 
 
 abounds in pithy epigrams. The German sentence is peculiarly- 
 long, heavy, and cumulative ; even in the bast writers like Von 
 Rauke it is utterly regardless of " arsis " and " rhesis ; " it expresses 
 its subordinate meanings rather by epithets than by short relative 
 clauses ; and consequently it is often very much involved and 1 ) t 
 suited to the comprehension of any but well educated men. It is 
 not an uncommon thing to find Germans of average education 
 unable to master the intricate kbyrinthine style of writers of their 
 own language. English pros^ literature has hitherto combined 
 the advantages of the French and German styles without the draw- 
 backs of either. The English sentence contains often more than 
 one swell and cadence, often mixed metaphors, and is often of 
 unequal length with the preceding and following sentences ; but 
 in the works of good writers it is never involved, and ought never 
 to contain any allusions which are not fully explained in subor- 
 dinate clauses or separate sentences. It uses frequent relatives 
 rather than expressive epithets and participles ; it is eminently 
 analytical. Mr. Saintsbury says that, before the time of Dryden, 
 only the absence of inflexions saved our language from sharing the 
 fate of the German and "involving itself almost beyond reach of 
 extrication :" but this seems to be a hasty statement founded on 
 the manifest fondness of Milton for Latin synthetical constructions. 
 Enough it was saved ; and there is little danger that Mr. Carlyle's 
 influence will lead it astray again. We can admire and reverence 
 Mr. Carlyle's great work without imitating his mannerism of 
 speech. 
 
 This mannerism arises from his intense eager- 
 ness and impatience to present a thought to his '^^annerism'^ 
 readers in the most forcible words of which he can 
 lay hold : he cannot wait to construct a sentence, but will give 
 his ideas to the world just as they came rushing pell mell on his 
 brain. One almost wonders how he ever endured the inevitable 
 delay which must occur in putting thoughts on paper. It cannot 
 be denied that this style is exceedingly forcible and picturesque as 
 it was meant to be. Most people know the history of the French 
 Revolution chiefly through his flashing and vivid description of 
 the details, and of the characters ; but his head-strong and 
 passionate nature has committed him to faults in history, hardly 
 less glaring than Macaulay's. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle probably gave little or no thought to his style ; he 
 talked, we are told, in even more peculiar phrases than he wrote. 
 His humour is genuine if somewhat Titanic ; his " Teufelsdroeckh 
 laughter" has passed into a by-word, and moves all except the 
 most fastidious minds \ his pathos moves all. One might search 
 far in English literature without finding a finer passage, either in 
 beauty of idea or expression than the subjoined quotation from 
 Sartor Resartus ; — ■ 
 
34 The Development of English Prose Style. 
 
 " Silence as of death ; for midnight even in the Arctic latitudes 
 "has its chiraccer; nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy tinged, 
 " and the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar ocean ; over 
 " which in the utmost north the great sun hangs low and lazy, as 
 " if he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud couch wrought of 
 "crimson and cloth of gold; yet does his, light stream over the 
 " mirror of waters like a tremulous fire-pillar, starting downwards 
 " to the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. In such moments 
 '' solitude also is invaluable ; for who would speak or be looked 
 '' upon when behind him lies all Europe and Africa fast asleep, 
 " except the watchmen, and before him the silent immensity and 
 " palace of the Eternal, whereof our sun is but a porch-lamp." 
 
 I have ventured to give this quotation at some length, because 
 it is a really good specimen of what Mr. Carlyle's style is capable 
 of when he is least led astray by eccentricity. But even here he 
 indulges in a peculiarly inverted order of words, and an omission 
 of verbs, which, though striking and pictorial, is unpleasing to an 
 educated English ear. 
 
 The guidance which our best modern prose writers are following 
 is a different one from this of Mr. Carlyle ; there is hardly a book 
 published, by anyone who can be considered at all qualified to be 
 an author, which does not make use of chaste and even diction, 
 and a perspicuous aad terse grammatical construction. To such 
 an end all the changes which have been effected throughout the 
 history of English prose literature have been directed ; there has 
 been one constant effort to make diction simpler, while preserving 
 its purity, and to make sentences comprehensible without sacrificing 
 grammar to the desire for pictorial effect. Since 1660, at the 
 latest, all authors who have consciously turned their attention to 
 the improvement of either of these two elements of style, Dryden, 
 Johnson, Burke, and the early Edinburgh Reviewers have all 
 formed links in the same chain. It is a chain which, although one 
 may be tempted to think that we have now reached the maximum 
 of simplicity, compatible with avoidance of vulgar colloquialism, 
 is even being forged at the present hour ; a chain, the continuity 
 of which reflects the highest honour upon the self-restraint and 
 reasoning faculty of English prose authors. 
 
 MOWJiRAY & CO., PRIN I EKS, OXFORD, 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 arW9786 
 
 The development of English prose style 
 
 3 1924 031 429 321 
 
 olin.anx