In the Cool Element of Prose

As I thought about how best to discuss prose styles, it seemed easiest to constrain my overview, for the most part, to only a few generations of English prose. And in this, it’s especially fitting to start with the age of Dryden as it is then that we begin to see form a recognizably modern prose style: the stiff manner, intricate syntax, and elaborated rhetorical devices of the greater part of prose in the former generation soon gave way to a straightforward, conversational lucidity. But in order to understand this developing strain of English prose, we should read the kind of prose that preceded it: take Milton’s declaration of his future masterpiece:

For although a Poet soaring in the high region of his fancies with his garland and singing robes about him might without apology speak more of himself then I mean to do, yet for me sitting here below in the cool element of prose, a mortall thing among many readers of no Empyreall conceit, to venture and divulge unusual things of my selfe, I shall petition to the gentler sort, it may not be envy to me. I must say therefore that after I had from my first yeeres by the ceaselesse diligence and care of my father, whom God recompence, bin exercis’d to the tongues, and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers both at home and at the schools, it was found that whether ought was impos’d me by them that had the overlooking, or betak’n to of mine own choise in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the stile by certain vital signes it had, was likely to live. But much latelier in the privat Academies of Italy, […] I began this farre to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not lesse to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life) joyn’d with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.

Here’s our greatest poet resolved to become worthy of that epithet. Reading his prose, however, we must have recourse to Dryden’s judgment that “the Genius of every Age is different.” Milton, Taylor, Browne, depreciated in the next age, yet wrote well according to their own. We can admire the majesty of the style, but still, it seems ill-suited to our language. Although most literary prose of this age was written in such a manner, there existed, too, a plain style, of which we find its mastery in Bunyan:

As I walk’d through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a Man cloathed with Raggs, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own House, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the Book, and Read therein; and as he Read, he wept and trembled: and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry; saying, what shall I do?

His Pilgrim’s Progress has forthright solemnity (the echoes of the KJV help), but a refined, versatile, and conversational English was still forming. And its greatest contributor soon established it: Dryden’s postscript to his masterwork, his translation of Virgil, which, similar enough to compare with Milton, gives a sense of how quickly English prose had changed.

What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his Age, in Plenty and at Ease, I have undertaken to Translate in my Declining Years: strugling with Wants, oppress’d with Sickness, curb’d in my Genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write; and my Judges, if they are not very equitable, already prejudic’d against me, by the Lying Character which has been given them of my Morals. Yet steady to my Principles, and not dispirited with my Afflictions, I have, by the Blessing of God on my Endeavours, overcome all difficulties; and, in some measure, acquitted my self of the Debt which I ow’d the Publick, when I undertook this Work. In the first place therefore, I thankfully acknowledge to the Almighty Power, the Assistance he has given me in the beginning, the Prosecution, and Conclusion of my present Studies, which are more happily perform’d, than I could have promis’d to my self, when I labour’d under such Discouragements. For, what I have done, Imperfect as it is, for want of Health and leisure to Correct it, will be judg’d in after Ages, and possibly in the present, to be no dishonour to my Native Country.

In Dryden, we feel that we’re listening to the unabated thoughts of a forceful thinker. I’m no longer reading well-written prose: there sits Dryden, and here I am, engrossed. He comes across so clearly that when I blink, I almost glimpse him. Here’s the master of the middle style. Dryden brought English prose to a new perfection, but he was not alone: Tillotson, Sprat, Temple, Cowley all were admired, too, by their Augustan successors. And indeed, it wasn’t until these Augustans that this middle kind of style had been more widely grasped. Then, we find Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Defoe all contemporary, writing clear and elegant prose. And yet they still differed much in their particular styles. Read how Pope had written on a subject near to Dryden’s quoted passage, his preface to his translation of Homer:

What I have done is submitted to the public, from whose opinions I am prepared to learn; though I fear no judges so little as our best poets, who are most sensible of the weight of this task. As for the worst, whatever they shall please to say, they may give me some concern, as they are unhappy men, but none as they are malignant writers. I was guided in this translation by judgments very different from theirs, and by persons for whom they can have no kindness, if an old observation be true, that the strongest antipathy in the world is that of fools to men of wit. […] Whatever the success may prove, I shall never repent of an undertaking in which I have experienced the candour and friendship of so many persons of merit; and in which I hope to pass some of those years of youth that are generally lost in a circle of follies, after a manner neither wholly unuseful to others, nor disagreeable to myself.

Even from these short passages we can sense how different their styles are. Johnson well describes their characteristics, “Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden’s page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope’s is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller.” Yet however different their particular styles are, in both, we find just thoughts clearly and fittingly expressed, and these in an age that valued such attributes. With more reading, we’d notice that in time Dryden’s conversational tone took on a more literary character. While this trend begins in the Augustan age, it becomes more obvious in the next. There’s an often quoted anecdote about Johnson that after he once remarked of a play that it had not “wit enough to keep it sweet,” he swiftly corrected himself to “not vitality enough to preserve it from corruption.” And we can look further to a more famous example of this tendency in prose, Edmund Burke’s lament of Marie Antoinette:

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in — glittering like the morning-star full of life and splendour and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom! Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

I think this is beautiful, but I admit that it’s near the threshold of bombast. In the generation of Johnson, Burke, and Gibbon, that limit is often tested (and exceeded). Such were the times: we were then far from Dryden’s colloquial ease, and in the next ages, this magniloquence becomes overblown, but we have enough now for our purposes. Within all these general styles, great authors were able to write well, though I don’t think the styles themselves were equal. Yet these passages from our great predecessors bring to mind the vitiated state of our language. I could no more imagine Dryden writing now than I could imagine him ambling through the embrowned London of today. Our times have a deflationary effect on us. And the effect on our language could be developed much further. As a language is a common property, we can’t easily prevent the impresses made on it by the ignorant. I should also mention that I omitted any reference to genre, which would call for many more examples: How should we write an essay? a satire? a novel? Despite those concerns, my choice models are, of course, the Augustans (and Dryden, too). At their best, we find a common mastery of the modern, middle style between the ornate and the plain. Our stylistic manner today can rival none of those examples mentioned: we’re nearest to a very pallid plainness, yet within this scope, there is still room enough to write worthily in our own individual style.

We can’t, though, escape the taste of our age, which reminds me of a story Tasso told about when his father, who wrote a classical epic in an era that much preferred the romantic epics, recited his finished poem to a courtly audience, they one by one walked out until his father was reading to an empty room. In any case, my highest praise is to pellucid, conversational prose, and if I were asked whether it resembles actual conversation, I would reply, with Aristotle’s Poetics in mind, no, but the ideal must surpass the reality. We ought also to develop our style according to our bent and choose our genres carefully. Had Johnson devoted himself to tragedies, I’d have no occasion to mention him now. Yet more important than any stylistic attribute is goodness itself, which, to paraphrase Pope, not only renders us capable of being good writers, but good men. As Cato defined the orator as a vir bonus dicendi peritus, a good man skilled in speaking, so I define the writer similarly.