Hopkinsville Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, 1901-01-08
FASHIONS.
In Prose style Just as There ARE in
Dress

Dress.
Thirty Of forty years ago writers
and readers took delight in the deli
cacies and beauties Of prose style.
Lamb, Addison, De Quincy and Haw-
thorne were admired, especially by
young men, for sententiousness, ele-
gance, vivid rhetoric, or melodious
cadence. The vigor and point OF
Macaulay was initiated by young as
pirants. This taste was not cultivated
or stimulated by professors Of htera-
ture-the idea of making any mas
ter Of prose a subject of study would
have been deemed absurd-it was a
natural and widely-diffused sentiment
among all persons of any education.
1t seems now to have disappeared in
great measure. And with it has gone
the capacity to write prose except in
sensible, unornamented, straightfor-
ward manner.
Consider our historians. They are
careful, exact, truthful and lucid.
But since the death Of Froude we
may search the pages of the modern
writers in vain for examples Of rush
ing narrative, of exciting description,
or of any appeal to enthusiasm. All
is c0l0fiess and HHiinpsssioned. Park
mans brilliancy and Macaulay's fer
vor are alike out of date Theywould
be stigmatized as "mere literature"
or tawdry rhetoric The expression
of elevated sentiment is no longer
the fashion. It is considered bad
form, or the alfectation of a mind not
solidly ballasted with facts. You
may read a hundred novels without
finding anything similar to the de-
scription Of the storm by Dickens, in
David Copperfeld," or a passage suf-
fused with the pathos of Thackeray's
description Of the death Of Col. New
come.
The note of the style in modern
prose is subdued and depressed. The
object of the writer is to suggest
quietly. He never lets himself 60.
Meredith is in many ways the great
est of modern writers of fiction, but
his style is epigrammatic and eng
NAUTICAL, and certainly the reverse OF
beautiful Henry James is our great
est stylist, but he seems purposely
to shun clarity, he takes special pains
to avoid the Addisonian qualities our
fathers admired. A balanced sentence
is an abomination to him. He is as
careful to avoid any expression Of en-
thusiasm for the good or the beauti-
full or any detestation for meanness
as if these qualities did not exist All
this is typical. The maxim Of the
writer's Of prose at present is "show
no zeal or enthusiasm or you will be
laughed at, and TO be laughed at is
the greatest of misfortunes.D
We are far from saying that the
old way was the best, though it does
seem most natural. We merely wish
to call attention to the fact that there
are fashions in prose style just as there
are in dress. The modern unorna-
mented fashion is far preferable to
the excessively antithetical and bal
aneed form which johnson and Glib
son made the fashion in the eight
zenith century Mems relations to the
principle of the beautiful or at least
their manner of expressing their love
for it seems to change in different
periods. To-day we are more reserved
in prose expression than we were so
years ago. But it is little remarka-
bic that in expression through the
medium of color, as shown in paint
ing, household decorations, binding
of books, and the like, we are holder
than our fathers were. II is impossi-
bic, for instance, to find an old book
bound in brilliant red. ~ Hartford
Courant.