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"Modest Proposal" for eating children.

His satirical arrows never missed, and they were shot with almost superhuman strength. If the devil was at that time leading his forces in person, how he must have wished that the great Dean were upon his side!

We may see the influence of Swift in Carlyle, and also in the later work of Ruskin (" Fors Clavigera"). But in his field of devilish satire, Swift stands supreme in English literature, and perhaps in any literature.

The letter-writing style as used by Richardson in "Pamela" and "Clarissa Harlowe " became incorporated in the English novel; and in Thackeray we see the good-humored and humorous preaching of Addison perfectly assimilated and adapted to the requirements of the novelist. Indeed in recalling Bunyan, Swift (in “Gulliver”), Goldsmith, and Thackeray, we realize what a debt the novel owes to the essay.

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One more element remains to be considered, and that is the lyrical form and use of prose. De Quincey in his "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," and even more in "The English Mail Coach' and "Suspiria de Profundis " (which were in the nature of a sequel to the "Confessions"), was the first to show the peculiar lyrical powers of prose in modern essay writing, though in "Ecclesiastes" and other parts of the Old Testament we have as thorough-going "prose poetry" as ever De Quincey gave us. But De

Quincey was far outdone in this field by one who followed him, namely, Ruskin, in whose hands lyrical prose has reached its extreme development. In the novel, too, it was immensely exploited by Dickens.

The latest development of the English prose essay is a return to the Greek of Plato, and no better representative of this rejuvenescence of the classic spirit could be found than Matthew Arnold. But these Hellenic moderns have also been largely influenced by the French style of such men as Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, and Daudet, to mention three out of a multitude.

In the following section we shall endeavor to see what prose style may be in view of all that has gone before.

II

STYLE, OR THE ARTISTIC ELEMENT IN PROSE

BEFORE proceeding with a general consideration of prose style, let us pause to note an objection that the reader may possibly raise at this point. Why, he will ask, should you give so much space to "style" in introducing the "Best English Essays"? Is not the matter of far more importance in a literary composition than the manner? 1

1 De Quincey says of England: "In no country upon earth, were it possible to carry such an axiom into practical effect, is it

Yes, matter is always supreme over manner as far as greatness in literature is concerned; but it happens that in the essay especially, "the style is the man." As De Quincey, quoting from Wordsworth, expresses it, style is not the dress of thought, but the incarnation. Though the soul of a beautiful woman is infinitely above her body, we creatures of sense would entirely lose the soul were we to take away the body. Hence we must study the body if we would discover the soul.

The mission of the prose essay is much like the mission of woman's beauty - it is to diffuse an atmosphere and give us pleasure in such varied and minute ways that we are at a loss to analyze or assign a reason. In short, an essay should be criticised as a work of art, not as a collection of moral or scientific truths; and in so far as prose ceases to be a simple vehicle for facts and statements of truth, and comes to depend for its success on the feeling of pleasure it produces or the sense of beauty it conveys, it is said to possess "style."

We understand perfectly how painting as a fine art differs from house painting or sign painting, and how sculpture differs from stone-hewing. We also understand how poetry is a fine art akin both to music and to painting, and even how the magic of oratorical eloquence ranks spoken prose

a more determinate tendency of the national mind to value the matter of a book not only as paramount to the manner, but even as distinct from it and as capable of a distinct insulation."

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at times with the other arts. But we find it very difficult to distinguish between prose the common drudge of everyday life, and that development of prose which makes it a fine art. For want of a better term, the word "style" has been coming into use to designate and characterize that prose which is an art. Both the words "prose" and style" are unfortunate in this connection, for the reason that both have other uses and meanings. We speak of that which is dull as " prosy,' and in the common usage "style" refers especially to fashions in dress, and next to that to the mere manner of doing a thing, as when we say, "That's his style." It is a serious misfortune that when we speak of "prose" we must think inevitably of that which is dull and commonplace, and when we speak of style that we must think of the "styles" that are put on and put off, or of idiosyncrasy of manner, of which no man has a right to boast.

In studying the essay from the point of view of style, we mean simply that we are studying it as a work of fine art, but with one limitation, and that is, that while art usually takes into view conception and structure as well as execution or texture, style applies only to artistic texture. The truth is, the essay does not have artistic structure in the sense that the short story or the novel or the oration or the poem does, but only literary artistic texture, or style. (On this latter point we have only to recall the discursive and digres

sive manner of all the great essayists, from Addison to De Quincey.)

But even when we do catch the meaning of style as referring to artistic texture of language, we seem to misconceive it, as when we speak of wishing to acquire "a style," or to master "style,” as if there were but one style. This error is enforced apparently by one master of style, namely, Flaubert, of whom one of his critics says: "Possessed of an absolute belief that there exists but one way to express one thing, one word to call it by, one adjective to qualify, one verb to animate it, he gave himself to superhuman labor for the discovery, in every phrase, of that word, that verb, that epithet. In this way, he believed in some mysterious harmony of expression, and when a true word seemed to him to lack euphony, still went on seeking another, with invincible patience, certain that he had not yet got hold of the unique word.” 1

Only in a very narrow sense was Flaubert ght.

ht. The truth is, there is an infinite number of ways of expressing any and every conception -in short, as many different ways as there are persons to express it. Laboring under the false impression that there is but one style, or, at any rate, but one style for any given person, the student in search of style will select some one master whom he looks on as a master of style" - today it is most likely to be Pater or Flaubert or

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1 Quoted by Pater in his essay on "Style."

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