THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE
The main tendency of the age, in all departments of literature, is toward a clear, plain, and forcible style.
1. Poetry. The new movement was seen most clearly in the development of the heroic couplet, which was soon to spread throughout poetry and through much of the drama. As we have seen (p. [182]), in the previous age the couplet had become so loose that it resembled a cross between prose and verse. An exponent of such a measure is Chamberlayne (1619–89):
Poor love must dwell
Within no climate but what’s parallel
Unto our honoured births; the envied fate
Of princes oft these burdens find from state
When lowly swains, knowing no parent’s voice
Of negative, make a free and happy choice.
This is a curious liquid measure. The pause is irregularly distributed, and the rhythm is light and easy.
Cowley and Denham likewise obtain much credit for the introduction of the new measure; but the chief innovator is Edmund Waller (1606–87). Dryden, in his dedication to The Rival Ladies says, “Rime has all the advantages of prose besides its own. But the excellence and dignity of it were never fully known till Mr. Waller first taught it.” An extract from Waller will suffice:
While in this park I sing, the listening deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the same,
To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers,
With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.
The note here is quite different from that of the previous extract. The tread of the meter is steady and almost uniform, and the pauses cluster about the middle and the end of the lines. It must be noted, too, that a large proportion of Waller’s poetry took this form.
Dryden adopted the heroic couplet, but he improved upon the wooden respectability of his predecessors’ verse. While he retained all the couplet’s steadiness and force, he gave it an additional vigor, a sinewy elegance, and a noble rhythm and beauty. It is worth while giving another example of his couplet:
A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds
And Scythian shafts; and many winged wounds
Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly,
And doomed to death, though fated not to die.
Dryden, The Hind and the Panther
In its own fashion this passage is as melodious and powerful as some of the noblest lines of Milton.
In other forms of poetry the style contains little to be commented upon. The blank verse continues the disintegration that (with the exception of the verse of Milton) began with the death of Shakespeare. We give a good example of this Restoration blank verse:
Through a close lane as I pursued my journey,
And meditating on the last night’s vision,
I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself;
Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red,
And palsy shook her head; her hands seemed withered;
And on her crooked shoulder had she wrapped
The tattered remnant of an old striped hanging.
Otway, The Orphan
In this passage we can observe the absence of the high poetic fire of the Elizabethans and the lack of the thunderous depth of Milton. Observe the regularity of the beat, the uniformity of the pauses, and the frequency of the hypermetrical ending. There is, nevertheless, a certain somber, dogged attraction about the style of the passage. The average blank verse of the time is much less regular, and much less attractive.
The lyric still shows a reflection of the Caroline manner, as can be seen in the following example:
Love still has something of the sea,
From whence his mother rose;
No time his slaves from doubt can free,
Nor give their thoughts repose.
They are becalmed in clearest days,
And in rough weather tossed;
They wither under cold delays,
Or are in tempests lost.
Sedley (out of seven stanzas)
This lyric has an undoubted sweetness of expression, though it is artificial in thought.
2. Prose. Though the prose writing of the period is not great in bulk, it shows a profound change in style. Previous writers, such as Browne, Clarendon, and Hobbes, had done remarkable and beautiful work in prose, but their style had not yet found itself. It was wayward and erratic, often cumbrous and often obscure, and weighted with a Latinized construction and vocabulary. In Dryden’s time prose begins definitely to find its feet. It acquires a general utility and a permanence; it is smoothed and straightened, simplified and harmonized. This is the age of average prose, and prepares the way for the work of Swift and Addison, who stand on the threshold of the modern prose style. Less than forty years intervene between Dryden and Sir Thomas Browne; yet Dryden and his school seem to be nearer the twentieth century than they are to Browne.
Not that Dryden’s style is flawless. It is sometimes involved and obscure; there are little slips of grammar and many slips of expression; but on the average it is of high quality, and the impression that the reader receives is one of great freshness and abounding vitality. Further examples of this good average style will be found in the work of Temple and Halifax.
In the case of Bunyan the style becomes plainer still. But it is powerful and effective, and bears the narrative nobly. Pepys and Evelyn have no pretensions to style as such, but their work is admirably expressed, and Evelyn in especial has passages of more elevated diction.
In some authors of the period we find this desire for unornamented style degenerating into coarseness and ugliness. Such a one is Jeremy Collier (1650–1726), whose Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage (1698) caused a great commotion in its day. It attacked the vices of the stage with such vigor that it is said to have driven some of the playwrights from their evil courses. The style of this famous book is so colloquial that it becomes in places ungrammatical. Thomas Sprat (1635–1713) was another disciple of the same school. He wrote on the newly formed Royal Society, which demanded from its members, “a close, naked, natural way of speaking.” This expresses the new development quite well. A greater man than Sprat but a fellow-member of the Royal Society, was John Locke (1632–1704), who in his famous Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) put the principle into practice. Locke’s style is bare to baldness, but it is clear. We give an example:
Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery; others, for apologues, and apposite, diverting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who excel in either of them, never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to be learnt. But yet it is true, that at first some lucky hit, which took with somebody, and gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it without perceiving how; and that is attributed wholly to nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first rise to it; but that never carries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but from Westminster Hall to the Exchange, will find a different genius and turn in their ways of talking; and one cannot think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or inns of court.
TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
| Date | Poetry | Drama | Prose | |||||
| Lyrical | Narrative | Satirical and Didactic | Tragedy | Comedy | Narrative | Essay | Miscellaneous | |
| 1650 | ||||||||
| 1660 | Pepys | |||||||
| Dryden | Dryden | |||||||
| Butler | Evelyn | |||||||
| Dryden | ||||||||
| Dorset | Etheredge | Bunyan | ||||||
| |Sedley | Dryden | Dryden | Dryden[136] | |||||
| Rochester | ||||||||
| 1670 | Shadwell | Tillotson | ||||||
| Sprat | ||||||||
| Lee | Wycherley | |||||||
| Otway | ||||||||
| Oldham | ||||||||
| 1680 | Halifax | |||||||
| Shadwell | Temple | Temple | ||||||
| Dryden[137] | ||||||||
| Rowe | ||||||||
| Dryden[138] | ||||||||
| 1690 | Dryden[139] | |||||||
| Congreve | ||||||||
| Vanbrugh | ||||||||
| Dryden[140] | ||||||||
| 1700 | Dryden[141] | Farquhar | ||||||
In one prominent case we have a survival of the more elaborate style of the past, and that is in the history of Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), Bishop of Salisbury, whose History of his own Times was published after his death. The style of the book is modeled on that of Clarendon. Burnet’s style is not of the same class as that of his predecessor: it has lapses into colloquialism; its sentences are snipped into small pieces by means of frequent colons and semicolons; and he has not Clarendon’s command of vocabulary.
EXERCISES
1. The two following lyrics are respectively of the Restoration and the Caroline periods. Compare and contrast them in (a) subject, (b) style, and (c) meter. Summarize the effect of either of them, and say which you prefer and why you prefer it.
(1) Love in fantastic triumph sate,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed,
For whom fresh pains he did create,
And strange tyrannic power he showed.
From thy bright eyes he took his fires,
Which round about in sport he hurled;
But ’twas from mine he took desires
Enough t’ undo the amorous world.
From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty;
From me his languishment and fears,
And every killing dart from thee:
Thus thou, and I, the god have armed
And set him up a deity;
But my poor heart alone is harmed,
While thine the victor is, and free.
Aphra Behn (1640–89)
(2) Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon:
As yet the early-rising Sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a Spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you, or any thing.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away
Like to the Summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew
Ne’er to be found again.
To Daffodils, Herrick (1591–1674)
2. Write a brief criticism of the following passage of Dryden’s prose. Comment upon (a) the vocabulary, (b) the type of sentence, (c) any colloquialisms or slips of grammar, and (d) its value as literary criticism.
He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not have described their natures better, than by the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking, gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this; there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. ’Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that “Here is God’s plenty.” We have our forefathers and great-granddames all before us, as they were in Chaucer’s days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of monks and friars, and canons, and lady abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of Nature, though everything is altered.
Preface to the “Fables”
3. The extracts given below illustrate the development of the stopped couplet. Point out briefly the change that comes over the meter, paying attention to (a) the regularity of the accent, (b) the pause, and (c) the cæsura.
(1) The sable mantle of the silent night
Shut from the world the ever-joysome light.
Care fled away, and softest slumbers please
To leave the court for lowly cottages.
Wild beasts forsook their dens on woody hills,
And sleightful otters left the purling rills;
Rooks to their nests in high woods now were flung,
And with their spread wings shield their naked young.
When thieves from thickets to the cross-ways stir,
And terror frights the lonely passenger;
When naught was heard but now and then the howl
Of some vile cur, or whooping of the owl.
William Browne, 1620
(2) Oh, virtue’s pattern, glory of our times,
Sent of past days to expiate the crimes;
Great King, but better far than thou art great,
Whom state not honours but who honours state;
By wonder born, by wonder first installed,
By wonder after to new kingdoms called;
Young, kept by wonder from home-bred alarms,
Old, saved by wonder from pale traitor’s harms,
To be for this thy reign, which wonders brings,
A king of wonder, wonder unto kings.
If Pict, Dane, Norman, thy smooth yoke had seen,
Pict, Dane, and Norman, had thy subjects been;
If Brutus knew the bliss thy rule doth give,
E’en Brutus joy would under thee to live.
For thou thy people dost so dearly love,
That they a father more than prince thee prove.
Drummond, 1630
(3) The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er;
So, calm are we when passions are no more!
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
Waller, 1687
(4) See barbarous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabæan springs!
For thee Idume’s spicy forests blow,
And seeds of golden Ophir’s mountains glow.
See heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day.
Pope, 1730
4. In the following extract from Bunyan explain carefully the literal meaning that lies behind the allegory. Remark upon (a) its clearness, (b) its appropriateness and beauty. Add a note on Bunyan’s style, especially with regard to its connection with the Bible.
But we will come again to this valley of humiliation. It is the best and most fruitful piece of ground in all these parts. It is fat ground, and, as you see, consisteth much in meadows; and if a man was to come here in summer-time, as we do now, if he knew not anything before thereof, and if he also delighted himself in the sight of his eyes, he might see that which would be delightful to him. Behold how green this valley is! also how beautiful with lilies! I have known many labouring men that have got good estates in this valley of humiliation. “For God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble”; for indeed it is a very fruitful soil, and doth bring forth handfuls. Some also have wished that the next way to their father’s house were here, that they might be troubled no more with either hills or mountains to go over; but the way is the way, and there’s an end.
5. The following extracts illustrate respectively Restoration comedy and tragedy:
(1) (This is part of a scene between Aimwell, a gentleman who is staying at an inn, and Gibbet, a highwayman, who is trying to insinuate himself into his company by calling himself a military officer.)
Enter Gibbet
Gibbet. Sir, I’m yours.
Aimwell. ’Tis more than I deserve, sir, for I don’t know you.
Gibbet. I don’t wonder at that, sir, for you never saw me before—[aside]—I hope.
Aimwell. And pray, sir, how came I by the honour of seeing you now?
Gibbet. Sir, I scorn to intrude upon any gentleman, but my landlord—
Aimwell. O sir, I ask your pardon, you’re the captain he told me of?
Gibbet. At your service, sir.
Aimwell. What regiment, may I be so bold?
Gibbet. A marching regiment, an old corps.
Aimwell [aside]. Very old, if your coat be regimental. [Aloud] You have served abroad, sir?
Gibbet. Yes, sir, in the plantations,’twas my lot to be sent into the worst service; I would have quitted it indeed, but a man of honour, you know—Besides, ’twas for the good of my country that I should be abroad: anything for the good of one’s country—I’m a Roman for that.
Aimwell. You found the West Indies very hot, sir?
Gibbet. Ay, sir, too hot for me.
Aimwell. Pray, sir, han’t I seen your face at Will’s coffee-house?
Gibbet. Yes, sir, and at White’s too.
Aimwell. And where is your company now, captain?
Gibbet. They an’t come yet.
Aimwell. Why, d’ye expect them here?
Gibbet. They’ll be here to-night, sir.
Aimwell. Which way do they march?
Gibbet. Across country.
Farquhar, The Beaux’ Stratagem
Remark upon the style of the dialogue, and how it suits the situation.
(2) (This extract occurs near the end of “Venice Preserved,” Otway’s famous tragedy. Pierre, a conspirator against the Venetian Senate, is about to be tortured publicly on the wheel. His friend Jaffier, who has wronged Pierre, has come to witness the execution.)
Officer. The day grows late, sir.
Pierre.I’ll make haste. O Jaffier!
Though thou’st betrayed me, do me some way justice.
Jaffier. No more of that: thy wishes shall be satisfied....
[Going away, Pierre holds him.
Pierre. No—this—no more![He whispers Jaffier.
Jaffier.Ha! is’t then so?
Pierre.Most certainly.
Jaffier. I’ll do’t.
Pierre.Remember.
Officer.Sir.
Pierre.Come, now I’m ready.
[He and Jaffier ascend the scaffold.
Captain, you should be a gentleman of honour.
Keep off the rabble, that I may have room
To entertain my fate and die with decency.
Come!
[Takes off his gown. Executioner prepares to bind him.
Priest.Son!
Pierre.Hence, tempter!
Officer.Stand off, priest.
Pierre. I thank you, sir.
You’ll think on’t.[To Jaffier.
Jaffier. ’Twon’t grow stale before to-morrow.
Pierre. Now, Jaffier! Now I am going. Now—
[Executioner having bound him.
Jaffier. Have at thee, thou honest heart!
Then, here! [Stabs him.
And this is well too![Stabs himself.
Priest.Damnable deed!
Pierre. Now thou hast indeed been faithful.
This was done nobly—we’ve deceived the Senate.
Jaffier. Bravely.
Pierre. Ha! Ha! Ha!—Oh! Oh!—[Dies.
Jaffier.Now, you curs’d rulers,
Thus of the blood ye’ve shed I make libation,
And sprinkle it mingling; may it rest upon you,
And all your race: be henceforth peace a stranger
Within your walls; let plagues and famine waste
Your generations—O poor Belvidera!...
I’m sick—I’m quiet—[Dies.
Remark upon the power of this scene, the skill shown in the variation of the speeches, the use of colloquialisms, and the climax. Does it strike you as being overdone? Add a note on the meter.
6. The following is Dryden’s character-sketch of the Duke of Buckingham, who receives the name of Zimri. (Dryden, in his Essay on Satire, says: “How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave without using any of these opprobrious names! There is a vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place.... The character of Zimri, in my Absalom and Achitophel, is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem. It is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough.”)
Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over violent or over civil
That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laughed himself from Court; then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne’er be chief:
For spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel;
Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.
From this passage quote the lines which hint that Buckingham is respectively “a fool, a blockhead, or a knave” without actually calling him so. Quote other lines that seem to be particularly effective. Remark upon the style of the couplet: the meter, the position of the pause, and the kind of rhyme. Finally, write a paragraph summarizing the effect the passage produces on the reader.
7. The passage given below is an extract from Dryden’s earliest printed poem (1658). Compare it with the passage given in the last exercise.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit,
Who, rebel-like, with their own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection ’gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?
No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.
Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings
8. Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, the energy divine.
Pope
From the passages already quoted give extracts to show the truth of the above statement.
9. Use the following quotation to sketch the development of English prose from the death of Shakespeare to the death of Dryden:
When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator of Homer, expressing himself in his preface thus: “Though truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora and Ganges few eyes can sound her, I hope yet those few here will so discover and confirm, that, the date being out of her darkness in this morning of our poet, he shall now gird his temples with the sun,”—we pronounce that such a prose is intolerable. When we find Milton writing: “And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem,”—we pronounce that such a prose has its own grandeur, but that it is obsolete and inconvenient. But when we find Dryden telling us: “What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write,” then we exclaim that here at last we have the true English prose, prose such as we would all gladly use if we only knew how. Yet Dryden was Milton’s contemporary.
Matthew Arnold
10. “A good deal of the unconquerable individuality of the earlier part of the century survives in it, and prevents monotony. After Addison everybody tries to write like Addison; after Johnson almost everybody tries to write like Johnson. But after Dryden everybody dare not yet try to write like Dryden.” (Saintsbury.) Show how far this statement applies to the prose style of the age.
11. “The characteristic feature of The Pilgrim’s Progress is that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest.” (Macaulay.) Show how Bunyan, in plot, characters, and style, arouses this “strong human interest” in his allegory. From this point of view compare him with Spenser, who, Macaulay says, does not arouse this interest.
12. The period of Dryden is often called “the Age of Satire.” Account for the prominence of satire in this period, and point out some of the effects it had on current and the succeeding writing.
13. What are the main features of Restoration drama?
14. “No man exercised so much influence on the age. The reason is obvious. On no man did the age exercise so much influence.” (Macaulay.) How far is this statement true of Dryden?