Drayton, 1620
4. Hooker’s is sometimes considered to be the most highly developed of Elizabethan prose styles. In the following two extracts examine the vocabulary, sentence-construction, and general competence of the first, and compare it with the second, which was written about two hundred years earlier.
(1) Touching musical harmony, whether by instrument or by voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such notwithstanding is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been thereby induced to think that the soul itself by nature is, or hath in it, harmony; a thing which delighteth all ages, and beseemeth all states; a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as decent being added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being used when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean, the very standing, rising and falling, the very steps and inflections every way, the turns and varieties of all passions whereunto the mind is subject; yea, so to imitate them, that, whether it resemble unto us the same state wherein our minds already are, or a clean contrary, we are not more contentedly by the one confirmed, than changed and led away by the other. In harmony, the very image and character even of virtue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and brought by having them often iterated into a love of the things themselves. For which cause there is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony; than some, nothing more strong and potent unto good.
Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1592
(2) This Emperor Prester John, when he goeth in to battle, against any other lord, he hath no banners borne before him: but he hath three crosses of gold, fine, great and high, full of precious stones: and every of the crosses be set in a chariot, full richly arrayed. And for to keep every cross, be ordained ten thousand men of arms, and more than a hundred thousand men on foot, in manner as men would keep a standard in our countries, when that we be in land of war. And this number of folk is without the principal host, and without wings ordained for the battle. And when he hath no war, but rideth with a privy retinue, then he hath borne before him but a cross of tree, without peinture, and without gold or silver or precious stones; in remembrance, that Jesu Christ suffered death upon a cross of tree.
Mandeville, Travels, 1400
5. In what respects is each of the following extracts typical of its author and its age? Write a very brief appreciation of the style of each.
(1) Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.—