A history of English literature

by Edward Albert

TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

Date	Poetry			Drama		Prose
	Lyrical	Narrative-Descriptive	Satirical and Didactic	Comedy	Tragedy	Novel	Essay	Miscellaneous
			Johnson[173]			Richardson[174]		Hume
		Shenstone				Fielding[175]
	Collins
		Thomson[176]				Smollett
1750			Johnson[177]		Johnson[178]
							Johnson[179]
		Gray[180]
					Hume
								Burke
						Johnson[181]
1760						Sterne	Goldsmith	Robertson
			Churchill[182]			Walpole
		Goldsmith[183]
						Goldsmith[184]
1770	Chatterton	Chatterton		Goldsmith[185]
		Ferguson
						Mackenzie
				Sheridan
						Burney		Gibbon[186]
1780								Cowper
		Crabbe
	Blake					Beckford
		Cowper[187]
	Burns
1790								White
		Radcliffe
								Godwin
1800					Baillie

A fresh and highly interesting style is the poetic prose of Macpherson’s Ossian. Macpherson’s style is not ornate, for it is drawn from the simplest elements; it possesses a solemnity of expression, and so decided a rhythm and cadence, that the effect is almost lyrical. In the passage now given the reader should note that the sentences are nearly of uniform length, and that they could easily be written as separate lines of irregular verse:

Her voice came over the sea. Arindal my son descended from the hill; rough in spoils of the chase. His arrows rattled by his side; his bow was in his hand; five dark grey dogs attend his steps. He saw fierce Erath on the shore; he seized and bound him to an oak. Thick wind the thongs of the hide around his limbs; he loads the wind with his groans. Arindal ascends the deep in his boat, to bring Daura to land. Amar came in his wrath, and let fly the grey-feathered shaft. It sunk, it sunk in thy heart, O Arindal my son; for Erath the traitor thou diedst. The oar is stopped at once; he panted on the rock and expired. What is thy grief, O Daura, when round thy feet is poured thy brother’s blood! The boat is broken in twain. Amar plunges into the sea, to rescue his Daura, or die. Sudden a blast from the hill came over the waves. He sunk, and he rose no more.

EXERCISES

1. The first extract given below is in Johnsonese, the second is written in Johnson’s later manner. Compare the two with regard to their vocabulary and sentence-construction, and say which is the more ornate and which is the clearer and more vigorous. Which of the two do you prefer?

(1) In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amid inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection.

Johnson, Preface to “Dictionary,” 1755

(2) It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs he has not better poems. Dryden’s performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden therefore are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden’s fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope’s the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.

Johnson, Lives of the Poets, 1780