Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1854-01-28

OF poetry, OF considering
cuous works as repository from which to draw q the
dicton Of common life we may venture to pronounce
the assertion mainly correct after making due allowance
for the additional terms Of natural knowledge which
the increase Of science since the day of Johnson may
seem fairly demand, though we slow think
that modern scientific nomenclature might be advan
ageousy stripped of much pedsntic Technology which
weares and stuns the Of common people with
"words Of learned length and laundering sound"
Following the example of Nathan Drake, Whose " Es-
says the Tattler Spectator and Guardian contained
in FIVE tedious Volumes invaluable to the critical stu
dent Of Addson may consider the authors who pre-
coded Addison by referring them respectively to three
periods the first extending from 1880 (about the mid
die Of Eizabeths reign to the restoration in 1861 the
second from the restoration to the accession Of Queen
Anne in 1902 and the third from this last to the
year 714 by which time Addison had published his best
productions.
Among the prose writers to be ranged under the first
period the literary opponents Of their age we may
mention, in the order of their appearance, Sir Philip
Sidney, the judicious" Hooker Sir Walter Raleigh,
Lord Bacon Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, and
John Milton. The patient and ploddng Drake, in his
work above mentioned has culled from each of these
thors series of quotations in order thus to trace the
gradual changes in English STYLE and to define its actual
state during the period which these great combin
ed to illustrate. 1t is opinion that in point Of
style the earlier writer's Of this period surpassed
the later. Sir Philip Sidney certainly employs more
diomatc English style than Sir Thomas Browne,
Milton who was, Wordsworth has said, Hebrew in
soul but Roman in tongue. The Ecclesiastical Poity
of Hooker bewrays the Lanising tendencies of the times
much more strikingy than the Arcadia Of gentle Sir
Philip. Sir Walter Raleigh, however, possessed die
ton more pure and perspicuous well more free
beth James the First Hume remarked in his day that
Raleigh the best model of that ancient style"
which prevailed among earlier writer's Bacon, he
thinks, lacked in the elegance of his native tongue;
his style is stiff and rigid" remark which appli-
cable to only portion Of his writings for he certainly
has left examples Of style which may pronounce
always pleasing and often ornate. The writings of Bur-
ton and Browne to have been intended for the La
tins rather than the English for not to speak of their
peroded sentences they tesseated with profusion
of Latin quotations which would render them intel
gible to Roman who could read English than to
| an Englishman who could not read Latin.
And yet with all their faults in respect of STYLE the
works Of Burton and of Sir Thomas Browne worthy
of attentive study, and will richly repay him that gives
his days and nights to their perusal They contain
mines Of thought that perfectly exhaustess though
generation after another in the world Of letters has
the Anatomy of Melancholy that sterne derived the
better part of his inspiration and Dr. johnson borrowed
from the Relgo Nedci and the Pseudodona Epidemica
something other and better than their sesqupedaan and
pedantic diction. -.
To show how far the " Latnisation" of the English
tongue carried by these writers may adduce the
following instance, which could be multiplied ad Hbun
from the pages Of Sir Thomas Browne He is speaking
in the Pseudodoxia Epidemica" of the various quail
ties possessed by the crystal
'sThe principal and most gemmary affection is its
translucency; as for inadiancy sparkling which is
found in many gems, it is not dscoverable in this for it
comeh short of their compactness and dury and there
requirethnot the energy, the saph granate and
topaz but will receive impression from steel in
like the turchois. As for its diaphany prespcuy,
it enjoyeh that most emnenty and the thereof
its continuity having its earthly and sainous parts
exactly resolved that its body is left mporous and not
dscreted by atomical examinations For that continuity
of parts is the OF prespicuity it is made presp
cuous in two ways of experiment" &c.
Or take the following passage, which find extracted
from Sir Thomas Urquhart's "Jewel." Sir Thomas,
may add perhaps the who carried this afecta
ton to its highest possible degree dsancng by oil odds
the Latinsing and Gracising too of his contempt
raries-(See his Life of the Admirable Crichton for
abundant confirmation of this statement:)
81 could have introduced IN case of obscuity C) sy-
nonymal exargasc and pailogetic calculations; for
tatons of epthets for the vehement excitaon of mat
ter EXPLANATIONS in the 'front.' and epiphonemas in the
could have used for the promper stirring up
of passion, apostrophal and prosopopeal diversions
and for the appeasing and settling Of them epanor
thetic revocatons and aposiopetic restraints could
have inserted diaogsms displaying their interrogatory
part with communicatively pysmac and sustentative
ourshes, proeptcay, with the refuative schemes
of anticipation and and that part which
the reponsory with the figures Of permission and
concession"
This, we imagine, was about the maximum develop
ment of the fashionable style during the Ezabethan Pc
Rod and few years later The argon of Greek deriva
ves began to mngle with the inverted periods of
put to flight.
But the restoration of Charles H. changed all this.
During their exile the continent the Stuars had be-
come French in heart, life, and speech. Our mother
tongue was now inundated by food of Gaicsms The
style periodque exchanged for the style coupe An
affected grandeur followed by affected abandon.
few like Jeremy Taylor, the Shakespeare of the pull
pit still leaned toward the ance regime in literature but
the most cursory examination Of such prose writers
Cowley, This poetry remained insueraby pedantic Cla
rendon, Barrow Totson Temple, and Dryden will suf-
fee to convince the reader that great change had been
introduced by the contact of the French with the Eng
sh tongue; and our language then assumed that sruc
ture which it has substantially retained since Dry
den brings down to the close of second PERIOD
the accession of Queen Anne whose reign opened what
has since been sometimes called " the Augustan age of
English literature. ..'..
The writer's of this period who preceded Addison in the
higher departments of literary effort were Swift and