The Glory of English Prose | Page 8

DEAR ANTONY,
You will have seen from the extracts I have already quoted to you of
the writers of the Elizabethan age that the style of all of them possesses
something large and resonant, something that may be said to constitute
the "grand style" in prose; and this quite naturally without effort, and
without the slightest touch of affectation.
A great writer who came immediately after the Elizabethans--namely,
Sir Thomas Browne, who lived from 1605 to 1682--displays the
development in his style of something less simple and more precious
than ruled in the former generation.
It is difficult to select any passage from his works where all is so good.
He was curious and exact in his choice of words and commanded a

wide vocabulary. There is deliberate ingenuity in the framing of his
sentences, which arrests attention and markedly distinguishes his style.
His Urn Burial, in spite of its elaboration, reaches a grave and solemn
splendour.
The fifth chapter, which begins by speaking of the dead who have
"quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests,"
rises to a very noble elevation as English prose.
Here I quote one paragraph of it, characteristic of the whole:--
"Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with
memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember
our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart
upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or
themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce
callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to
come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature,
whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our
delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows
are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity
contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their
souls,--a good way to continue their memories, while having the
advantage of plural successions they could not but act something
remarkable in such variety of beings, and, enjoying the fame of their
passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations.
Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were
content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the
public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their
unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more
unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet
consistencies, to attend
the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly.
The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or Time hath spared, avarice
now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. Mizraim cures
wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams."

Milton was a contemporary of Sir Thomas Browne, and, like all great
poets, was a master of resounding prose. All that he wrote, both in
verse and prose, is severely classic in its form. His Samson Agonistes is
perhaps the finest example of a play written in English after the manner
of the Greek dramas.
Milton wrote The Areopagitica in defence of the liberty of publishers
and printers of books. And it stands for all time as the first and greatest
argument against interference with the freedom of the press.
The Areopagitæ were judges at Athens in its more flourishing time,
who sat on Mars Hill and made decrees and passed sentences which
were delivered in public and commanded universal respect.
I will quote one of the finest passages in this great and splendid
utterance:--
"I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and
Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves
as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest
justice on them as malefactors: for books are not absolutely dead things,
but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was
whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest
efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know
they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous
dragons' teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up
armed men.
"And yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost
kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable
creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason
itself; kills the Image of God as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a
burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a
master-spirit; embalmed and treasured up on purpose