I. Defining Prose: Nature and Characteristics
The term "prose" derives from the Latin prosus, meaning "direct" or "straightforward." In its essence, prose represents the ordinary form of written or spoken language, free from the metrical structure that characterizes poetry. It is the most natural and direct medium for expressing thoughts, ideas, and emotions, serving as the fundamental vehicle for communication in everyday life, scholarship, journalism, and literature.
The French poet and critic Paul Valéry offered a memorable comparison between prose and poetry that illuminates their essential difference. He likened prose to walking—functional, purposeful, and aimed at reaching a destination—while poetry resembles dancing, existing for its own sake and deriving its value from the grace and beauty of the movement itself. In prose, we walk toward meaning; in poetry, we dance within meaning.
In ordinary prose, the primary aim is to communicate one's thoughts and feelings as clearly and precisely as possible. Two elements are paramount: (a) what one wishes to say (the subject or content), and (b) how one chooses to say it (the style or manner of expression). The style naturally varies according to the writer's personality, the intended audience, and the purpose of the composition. A scientific treatise, a personal letter, a philosophical argument, and a novel all employ prose but with vastly different styles.
Prose can be categorized into three main varieties, though these categories are not rigidly separate:
Descriptive Prose paints pictures in words, recreating the appearance of people, places, or events through vivid sensory details. A successful description translates observation into vivid imagery and creates an atmosphere of its own. Charles Dickens's description of Mr. Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby exemplifies this: "He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two. The eye he had was unquestionably useful, but decidedly not ornamental: being of a greenish grey, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a street door." The careful selection of details—the eye, the puckered face, the flat and shiny hair, the ill-fitting clothes—allows readers to visualize the character vividly while simultaneously conveying the author's ironic judgment.
Narrative Prose recounts sequences of events, telling stories that may be factual (biographies, histories) or fictional (novels, short stories). Narrative writing recreates actual or imaginary experiences in a manner that allows readers to experience them mentally. Rudyard Kipling captured the essential ingredients of narrative in his famous verse: "I keep six honest serving-men / They taught me all I know: / Their names are What and Why and When / And How and Where and Who." The narrative engages readers through action, character development, and setting, carrying them along the stream of events.
Expository Prose explains, defines, or interprets ideas, presenting information in a logical and systematic manner. It includes writing on science, law, philosophy, technology, history, and criticism. While the primary object of exposition is to clarify and explain, the finest expository writing achieves literary distinction through its style, as demonstrated in the works of George Bernard Shaw, who could present complex arguments with wit, clarity, and rhetorical power.
The distinctions between these varieties, however, are not absolute. Skilled writers often blend description, narration, and exposition within a single work. A novel contains descriptive passages that set scenes and characterize individuals, narrative sequences that advance the plot, and expository passages that develop themes or explain motivations. The artistry lies in the seamless integration of these elements.
II. The Emergence of Prose in Old English (c. 450–1150)
The Origins
The beginnings of English prose are modest but historically significant. It is crucial to understand that poetry appeared long before prose was written down in English. While oral verse likely existed from the earliest times, prose as a literary form emerged later, primarily for practical purposes such as law codes, chronicles, and religious instruction. The Old English period saw the gradual development of a prose tradition that would lay the foundation for all subsequent English prose literature.
The extant remains of Old English literature have come down to us in late copies, some made three hundred years after the composition of the poems themselves. We know little about the poets, with only two names—Caedmon and Cynewulf—surviving, and even their works cannot be definitely ascribed to them. Prose, however, as it was used for practical purposes, often has established authorship.
King Alfred the Great: The Father of English Prose
King Alfred the Great (849–899) is justly called "the father of English prose." Though there were some prose writings of an official nature before his time, Alfred's contributions established prose as a significant literary medium. As he himself tells us in the preface to the Pastoral Care, he began his series of translations due to the lamentable state of English learning, largely the result of Danish depredations. Even knowledge of Latin was declining, so the king translated popular works into his native tongue to encourage learning among the clergy.
Alfred's five important translations were:
The Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory—the first of his translations, demonstrating Alfred's concern for clerical education
The History of the World of Orosius—a universal history that brought knowledge of the ancient world to English readers
Bede's Ecclesiastical History—though Alfred's claim to this translation is disputed, it would have been a natural choice for a king concerned with England's Christian heritage
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy—a philosophical work that appealed to Alfred's reflective nature
The Soliloquies of St Augustine—the last of the series, showing Alfred's development as a prose writer
Sometimes Alfred translated word for word, at other times more freely, but those passages that have greatest value both for understanding the character of the king and for their literary qualities are originals freely introduced by way of explanation or expansion. His prose style, as seen in the Preface to the Pastoral Care, is simple and straightforward, though not polished—as could not be expected given the early stage of prose development. Yet there is always the feeling that he was an artist of considerable natural ability.
Illustrative Passage from Alfred's Preface to the Pastoral Care:
"Swa claene hio waes oðfeallen on Angelcynne ðætte swiðe feawe waeron behionan Humbre þe hiora ðenunga cuðen understandan on Englisc oððe furðum an ærendgewrit of Laedene on Englisc areccan, ond ic wene ðætte noht monige begeondan Humbre naeren; swa feawe hiora waeron ðætte ic anne anlepne ne maeg geðenean be suðan Temese ðaða ic to rice feng."
("So completely has it [learning] decayed in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their mass-books in English and could even translate a letter from Latin into English, and I believe there were not many beyond the Humber either; so few of them were there that I cannot remember a single one south of the Thames when I became king.")
Ælfric and the Development of Prose Style
Ælfric (c. 955–c. 1010), probably best known for his Grammar, was a churchman who became abbot of Eynsham in 1005. Several of his works are extant: the Catholic Homilies, two series of sermons suitable for delivery by priests; a third series, the Lives of the Saints (written before 998); and translations from the Scriptures.
Ælfric's flowing and vigorous style shows remarkable skill in the art of putting complicated thought into narrative form. It is natural and easy and is often alliterative. His Colloquy is of great interest as a dialogue between master and pupils, not only from the literary but also from the historical point of view. Ælfric represents the beginning of the true line of development toward the prose of the Authorized Version.
Wulfstan: The Forceful Preacher
Wulfstan was Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop of York. Several of his signed homilies survive, and many more are believed on good evidence to be by him. His most famous piece is the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, which is typical for its sheer force and vigour, its repetition of ideas, and the alliterative nature of its style. It is fluent and powerful; indeed, Wulfstan must have been a most brilliant preacher. His prose demonstrates the growing confidence and rhetorical sophistication of late Old English prose.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was in all probability inspired by Alfred, who himself may well have dictated some of the entries, more particularly those dealing with his own campaigns. Extant in several manuscripts, the most important being the A or Parker and the E or Laud MSS, the Chronicle records events from simple notices to lengthy passages of narrative and description. Most interesting are certain character studies, particularly that of William the Conqueror himself, while the well-known descriptions of the horrors of Stephen's reign are worthy of note.
Passage from the Chronicle's Description of William the Conqueror (1086):
"Se cyng Willelm be we embe sprecað wæs swiðe wis man and swiðe rice and wurofulre and strengere ponne aenig his foregenga waere. He waes milde þam godum mannum þe God lufedon and ofer eall gemett stearc þam mannum þe wiðcwaedon his willan."
("King William, of whom we have spoken, was a very wise man and very powerful and more glorious and stronger than were any of his predecessors. He was mild to the good men who loved God and beyond measure stern to those men who opposed his will.")
III. Prose in the Middle English Period (c. 1150–1500)
Continuity Amid Change
The Norman Conquest of 1066, though often considered a watershed in English literary history, did not destroy the continuity of English prose. The effects of the Conquest on prose have in the past been exaggerated. The development in the Middle English period of the homiletic prose style has been clearly demonstrated to be in the true line from that of the Old English period. In other words, in spite of the Conquest, the continuity is clear.
The period saw the development of Middle English with the gradual weakening of the inflexional system of the older period. Scandinavian and French loan-words are found, the latter in increasing numbers. Five main dialect areas developed: Northern, East Midlands, West Midlands, South-eastern, and South-western. Gradually a standard developed from the East Midland dialect, due in part to the importance of that area and the capital, London.
The Ancrene Riwle: A Landmark in English Prose
The Ancrene Riwle is the most important of the early prose texts of this period and, as has been frequently pointed out, the most influential. Its date is difficult to decide but is to be ascribed to the twelfth century. It was written for three noble ladies who had become anchoresses, and was revised soon after for a larger community. It is a manual designed to guide them in the life they had chosen.
The guiding principle in this "rule" is undoubtedly "moderation in everything," and the most characteristic feature of the author as it appears in the work is his broad humanity. The homely elements in the work are such as attract the modern reader. The continuity of English prose style is now a commonplace in literary criticism, and here in the Ancrene Riwle the connection with the prose of Wulfstan and with that of the Authorized Version is clear.
Illustrative Passage on Backbliers:
"Bacbitares, þe biteð oðre men bihinden, beoð of two maneres; auh þe latere beoð wurse. Þe uorme cumeð al openliche, and seioð vuel bi anoyðer, and speouweð ut his atter, so muchel so him euer to muðe cumeð, and gulcheð al ut somed þet þe attri heorte sent up to þe tunge. Ac þe latere cumeð forð al an oðer wise, and is wurse þeond þen þe yer, auh under ureondes huckel, weorpeð adun þet heaud, and for on our te siken er he owith sigge, and make drupie chere; bisauimpleð longe abuten our te been betere ileued. And hwon hit alles cumeð forð þenne is hit zeoluh atter."
("Backbiters, who bite other men behind their backs, are of two kinds; but the latter are the worse. The first comes all openly, and speaks evilly about another, and spews up his poison, as much as ever comes to his mouth, and vomits all out together that the poisonous heart sent up to the tongue. But the latter kind comes forth in a completely different way, and is a worse fiend than the other, and in the guise of a friend casts down the head and begins to sigh before he says anything and puts on a dismal appearance; moralizes for a long time to be the better believed. But when it all comes forth then it is yellow poison.")
The Katherine Group
The Katherine Group and Ancrene Riwle are quite outstanding in their own way, though for most modern readers they lack interest and are mainly known to the general reader from certain "purple patches." Yet they are individual in style and, though many are translations, they are by no means slavish. The prose of the Ancrene Riwle and of the Katherine Group has at last been accepted for its true value in demonstrating the continuity of English prose.
IV. The Age of Chaucer and the Fourteenth Century (1350–1450)
The Standardization of English
The period of transition was now nearly over. The English language had shaken down to a kind of average—to the standard of the East Midland speech, the language of the capital city and of the universities. The other dialects, with the exception of the Scottish branch, rapidly melted away from literature. French and English had amalgamated to form the standard English tongue, which attained its first full expression in the works of Chaucer.
This era saw the foundation of an English prose style. Earlier specimens had been experimental or purely imitative; now, in the works of Mandeville and Malory, we have prose that is both original and individual. The English tongue was now ripe for a prose style. Latin and French were losing grip as popular prose mediums, and the growing desire for an English Bible exercised a steady pressure in favour of a standard English prose.
The Wycliffite Bible
John Wyclif (c. 1320–1384) was born in Yorkshire, educated at Oxford, and took a prominent part in the ecclesiastical feuds of his day. An active controversialist, he wrote many Latin books in support of his revolutionary opinions and issued a large number of tracts and pamphlets in English. An English translation of the Bible made at the end of his life has been popularly attributed to him, but while it undoubtedly reflects his influence, its authorship remains uncertain. How much actual translation Wyclif accomplished will never be known, but his was the leading spirit, and to him falls the glory of being the leader in the great work. To the second of the Wycliffite versions is sometimes given the name of John Purvey, the Lollard leader who succeeded Wyclif. The two versions are simple and unpretentious renderings, the second being much more finished than the first.
Sir John Mandeville's Travels
Sir John Mandeville is the English form of the name of Jehan de Mandeville, who compiled and published a French book of travels between 1357 and 1371. This French work was very popular and was translated into several languages, including English. The English version has a preface in which it is stated that the author was a Sir John Mandeville, a knight, born at St Albans, who crossed the sea in 1322 and travelled in many strange regions. Much of the personal narrative is invention; nowadays the very existence of Sir John is denied. The real author of the book is said to be Jehan de Bourgogne, who died at Liège in 1372.
The so-called "Travels" is a compilation from several popular books of voyages, including those of a Friar Odoric, of an Armenian called Hetoum, and of the famous traveller Marco Polo. These, with a few grains of original matter, are ingeniously welded into one of the most charming books of its kind. The travels are full of incredible descriptions and anecdotes, set down with delightful faith and eagerness. The style is sweet and clear, with some colloquial touches; and the short narrations freely dispersed through the text, tersely phrased and accurately gauged in length, are rendered with great skill.
Illustrative Passage:
"And zee schull understond that whan men comen to Jerusalem her first pilgrimage is to the chirehe of the Holy Sepulcr wher oure Lord was buryed, that is withoute the cytee on the north syde. But it is now enclosed in with the ton wall. And there is a full fair chirehe all rownd, and open above, and covered with leed. And on the west syde is a fair tour and an high for belles strongly made. And in the myddes of the chirehe is a tabernacle as it wer a lytill hows, made with a low lityll dore; and that tabernacle is made in manner of a half a compas right curiously and richly made of gold and azure and other riche coloures, full nobelyche made."
Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur
Sir Thomas Malory (died 1471?) is included here, though his famous work, the Morte d'Arthur, was composed as late as the "ix yere of the reygn of Kyng Edward the furth" (1469). Nearly all we know about Malory is contained in the preface of Caxton, the first printer of the book. Caxton says that the book was written by Sir Thomas Malory "out of ceryen books of frensshe."
The Morte d'Arthur, like the travels of Mandeville, is a compilation. The French Arthurian romances are drawn upon to create a prose romance of great length and detail. However diverse its sources, the book is written with a uniform dignity and fervour that express the very essence of romance and chivalry. It is a skilful blend of dialogue and narrative and is full of colour and life, while the style has a transparent clarity and a poetic sensitivity which make Malory our first great, individual prose stylist. Remote in spirit from the everyday concerns of its age, the Morte d'Arthur stands outside the main stream of the development of English prose.
Illustrative Passage:
"And on the morn the damsel and he took their leave and thanked the knight, and so departed, and rode on their way until they came to a great forest. And there was a great river and but one passage, and there were ready two knights on the further side to let them the passage. 'What sayest thou,' said the damsel, 'will thou match yonder knights, or turn again?' 'Nay,' said Sir Beaumains, 'I will not turn again and they were six more.' And therewithal he rushed into the water, and in the midst of the water, either brake their spears upon other to their hands, and then they drew their swords and smote eagerly at other. And at the last Sir Beaumains smote the other upon the helm that his head stonied, and therewithal he fell down in the water, and there was he drowned."
V. From Chaucer to Spenser (1450–1550)
The Development of Prose Style
In this period, the development of prose style was marked by a number of small improvements which in the aggregate represented no small advance. Unlike the poetry of the time, prose suffered from no retrogression. There was a perceptible increase in skill, due to increased practice; there was a growing perception of the beauties of rhythm and cadence; and in the purely formal sense, there was the appearance of the prose paragraph. Above all, the chief prose styles—the ornate, the middle, and the plain—were appearing faintly but perceptibly. With their arrival the rapid development of English prose was assured.
Reginald Pecock
Reginald Pecock (c. 1390–c. 1461) may have been born in Wales, educated at Oxford, and took orders, when he became prominent through his attacks upon the Lollards. In his arguments he went so far that he was convicted of heresy (1457), forced to make a public recantation, and had to resign his bishopric of Chichester. His two works were The Repressor of Over-much Blaming of the Clergy and The Book of Faith. In his dogma he strongly supported the rights of the laity. Pecock's style, though lacking literary distinction, is vigorous and clear, demonstrating the growing confidence of English prose for serious argument.
William Caxton and the Printing Press
William Caxton (c. 1422–1491) was born in Kent, was apprenticed to a London mercer, and went to Bruges, where he became successful in commerce. In 1469 he began to translate a popular French romance, the Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, and to print it for the English market. He thus learned the art of printing, and in 1476 he set up his press at Westminster, and so began the history of English printing.
The first book printed in England was The Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophers (1477). Caxton printed almost every English work of real quality known in his day, including Chaucer and Malory. In addition, he made and printed twenty-four translations from French, Dutch, and Latin texts, of which the most remarkable were the two earliest, the Recuyell of the Histories of Troye (1471) and the Game and Playe of the Chesse (1475).
The introductions to many of his books are of great personal and general interest, and show him to have been very conscious of his limitations as a literary artist. Anxious to use the elegant, ornate, "literary" style, he found himself unqualified to do so, and decided to write in "Englysshe not ouer rude, ne curyous, but in suche termes as shall be understanden by goddys grace." Even so, his style is marred by a very involved and confused sentence structure, which he never mastered, and a tendency to introduce foreign words and phrases which he neglected to translate.
Illustrative Passage from Caxton's Preface to the Recuyell:
"When I remember that every man is bounden by the commandment and counsel of the wise man to eschew sloth and idleness, which is mother and nourisher of vices, and ought to put myself unto virtuous occupation and business, then I, having no great charge of occupation, following the said counsel, took a French book and read therein many strange and marvellous histories wherein I had great pleasure and delight, as well for the novelty of the same as for the fair language of French, which was in prose so well and compendiously set and written, which methought I understood the sentence and substance of every matter."
John Fisher: The Ornate Style
John Fisher (c. 1459–1535), Bishop of Rochester, represents the beginnings of an ornate prose style. His sermons and tracts, though few in number, are of much importance. They are the first of the rhetorical-religious books that for several centuries were to be an outstanding feature of English prose. They show a decided advance in the direction of style: the searching after the appropriate word, the frequent use of rhetorical figures of speech, and a rapid and flowing rhythm. In brief, in the style of Fisher we can observe the beginnings of an ornate style that is the direct ancestor of the prose style of Jeremy Taylor and other divines of the same class.
Illustrative Passage:
"What life is more painful and laborious of itself than is the life of hunters which, most early in the morning, break their sleep and rise when others do take their rest and ease, and in his labour he may use no plain highways and the soft grass, but he must tread upon the fallows, run over the hedges, and creep through the thick bushes, and cry all the long day upon his dogs, and so continue without meat or drink until the very night drive him home; these labours be unto him pleasant and joyous, for the desire and love that he hath to see the poor hare chased with dogs."
Hugh Latimer: The Plain Style
Hugh Latimer (c. 1485–1555) was born in Leicestershire, educated at Cambridge, and rose to be chaplain to Henry VIII and Bishop of Worcester. He resisted some of the reforms of Henry, was imprisoned in the Tower, and was released on the death of the King. At the accession of Mary he was once again thrown into jail and was burnt at Oxford.
Latimer's English prose works consist of two volumes of sermons published in 1549. They are remarkable for their plain and dogmatic exposition, their graphical power, and their homely appeal. He is the first of the writers of plain style.
Sir Thomas More: The Middle Style
Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) was born in London, the son of a judge, educated in London, attached to the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and became a lawyer. A man of eager and aspiring mind, he fell under the influence of Erasmus, Colet, and other humanists of the period. His refusal to accept the Act of Supremacy led to his imprisonment (1534), and he was beheaded in the following year.
His English prose works include The Lyfe of John Picus, The Historie of Richard III, and a number of tracts and letters. He writes ably and clearly, but with no great distinction of manner. He is the first writer of the middle style.
VI. The Age of Elizabeth (1550–1630)
The Triumph of English Prose
For the first time, prose rose to a position of first-rate importance in the Elizabethan Age. The dead weight of the Latin tradition was passing away; English prose was acquiring a tradition and universal application; and so the rapid development was almost inevitable.
The English Bible: The Authorized Version
The task of Bible translation was completed by the issue of King James's Bible, or the Authorized Version (1611). The need for a standard text was urged during the conference between the dissentient sects held at Hampton Court in 1604. Forty-seven scholars, including the ablest professorial and episcopal talent, were appointed for the task; they were divided into six companies, each receiving a certain portion of the Biblical text for translation; each company revised the work of its fellow-translators. The task, begun in 1607, was completed in 1611.
The Authorized Version is distinguished by several remarkable features:
The Diversity of the Work: The Bible is not a single book but an entire literature, covering expository, narrative, and lyrical forms composed at widely different times.
The Unity of the Work: Despite the diversity of its sources, it has a remarkable uniformity of treatment and spirit, combining the strength of Tyndale's translations with the beautiful rhythms of Coverdale.
The Narrative Portions: The narrative parts of the Bible have a breadth, solidity, and noble austerity of style that make the Biblical narrative stand alone.
The Lyrical Portions: The Psalms, the Song of Solomon, and much of the Book of Job are perhaps the most important as literature, preserving Jewish rhythms and adding to them the music, the cadence, the soar and the swing of ecstatic English prose.
The Influence of the Bible: The English Bible has been a potent influence in literature. Multitudes of Biblical expressions have become woven into the very tissue of the tongue—"a broken reed," "the eleventh hour," "a thorn in the flesh," "a good Samaritan," "sweat of the brow." The style affects that of many of our greatest writers, imparting simplicity, dignity, and elevation to works as diverse as those of Bunyan, Ruskin, Macaulay, Milton, and Tennyson.
Francis Bacon and the Essay
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) is the first real essayist in English, following the French writer Montaigne. His Essays first appeared in 1597, numbering ten; the second (1612) and third (1625) editions raised the number to thirty-eight and fifty-eight respectively. They are on familiar subjects such as Learning, Studies, Vainglory, and Great Place, representing the meditations of a trained and learned mind.
In the first edition, the style is crisp, detached, and epigrammatic, conveying the impression that each essay has arisen from some happy thought or phrase around which other pithy statements are agglomerated. In the later editions, the ideas are expanded, the expression loses its spiky pointedness, and in the end we have an approach to a freer middle style. The essays are full of condensed, weighty, antithetical sentences with the qualities of proverbial expressions, notable for their precision and clarity of phrasing.
Illustrative Passage from "Of Studies":
"Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."
John Lyly and Euphuism
John Lyly (c. 1554–1606) marked a distinct stage in the march of English prose. His Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579) gave its name to "euphuism," the first consciously fabricated prose style in the language. It is mannered and affected, with balanced phrases, intricate alliteration, laboured comparisons drawn from classical and other sources, and ornate epithets. The effect is quaint and not displeasing, though the narrative labours under the weight of it. Euphuism suited the growing literary consciousness of its day and hence enjoyed pronounced, though temporary, success.
Illustrative Passage:
"Philautus being a town-born child, both for his own continuance and the great countenance which his father had while he lived crept into credit with Don Ferardo one of the chief governors of the city, who although he had a courtly crew of gentlewomen sojourning in his palace, yet his daughter, heir to his whole revenues, stained the beauty of them all, whose modest bashfulness caused the other to look wan for envy, whose lily cheeks dyed with a vermilion red, made the rest to blush at her beauty."
Richard Hooker and the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
Richard Hooker (1554–1600) wrote Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, supporting Episcopacy against Presbyterianism. In style he is strongly affected by classical writers, but he usually writes with homeliness and point; his sentences are carefully constructed; the rhythm moves easily; and there is both precision and melody in his language.
Sir Thomas Overbury and the Character-Writers
Sir Thomas Overbury (1581–1613) survives in literature as the author of a series of Characters (1614). Based on the ancient Greek work of Theophrastus, the book consists of a number of concise character-sketches of well-known types—a Milkmaid, a Pedant, a Franklin, and "an Affectate Traveller." They are written from the point of view of the courtier and are epigrammatic and full of "conceits" and wit. They show a close and penetrating observation and a fine sense of humour.
Robert Burton: The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton (1577–1640) produced The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), an elaborate and discursive study of melancholy, its species and kinds, its causes, results, and cure. The book, though laboured and saturnine in tone, shows an underlying common sense and a true sympathy with humanity. Its learning is immense and unconventional, drawn from many rare authors; its humour curiously crabbed, subdued, and ironical. The diction has a colloquial naturalness and is rarely obscure; the enormous sentences, packed with quotation and allusion, are loosely knit.
VII. The Age of Milton (1630–1660)
The Expansion of Prose
During this period, the development of prose was carried on from the previous age. In spite of the hampering effects of civil strife, the prose output was copious and excellent. There was a notable advance in the sermon; pamphlets were abundant; and history, politics, philosophy, and miscellaneous kinds were well represented. In addition, there was a remarkable advance in prose style.
John Milton: Controversial Prose
Most of Milton's prose was written during the middle period of his life (1640–60), when he was busy with public affairs. In all they amount to twenty-five pamphlets, of which twenty-one are in English and the remaining four in Latin. He engaged in lively controversy with Bishop Hall over episcopacy, wrote a rather poor tract on education, composed two pamphlets on divorce that scandalized the public by the freedom of their opinions, and wrote Areopagitica (1644), his noble and impassioned plea for the liberty of the Press.
When we consider the style of Milton's prose, we must keep in mind how it was occasioned. His pamphlets were cast off at white heat and precipitated into print while some topic was in urgent debate. Hence in method they are tempestuous and disordered; voluble, violent, and lax in style. They reveal intense zeal and pugnacity, a mind at once spacious in ideals and intolerant in application, a rich fancy, and a capacious scholarship. They lack humour, proportion, and restraint; but in spite of these defects they are among the greatest controversial compositions in the language.
Illustrative Passage from Areopagitica:
"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 dragon's 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."
Sir Thomas Browne: The Ornate Style
Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) may be taken as representative of the best prose-writers of the period. Almost alone among his contemporaries, Browne seems to have been unaffected by the commotions of the time. His prose works, produced during some of the hottest years of civil contention, are tranquilly oblivious of unrest. His books are only five in number, but of great and almost uniform merit: Religio Medici (written c. 1635), Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), Hydriotaphia: Urne Buriall (1658), The Garden of Cyrus (1658), and Christian Morals (published after his death).
Browne's claim to fame is as a literary stylist rather than as a philosopher. He shows the ornate style of the time in its richest bloom. His diction is strongly Latinized, sometimes to the limit of obscurity; and he has the scholastic habit of introducing Latin tags and references. His sentences are carefully wrought and artistically combined into paragraphs; and, most important from the purely literary point of view, the diction has a richness of effect unknown among other English prose-writers. The rhythm is harmonious, and finishes with carefully attuned cadences.
Illustrative Passage from Hydriotaphia:
"Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of preordination, and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them."
Jeremy Taylor: The Golden Age of the Pulpit
This period has been called "the Golden Age of the English pulpit." The violent religious strife of the time had much to do with the great flow of sermon writing, which is marked with eloquence, learning, and strong argument. Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) is the most prominent literary divine of the period. His most popular works were The Liberty of Prophesying (1647), Holy Living (1650), and Holy Dying (1651). In his writings he is fond of quotations and allusions and of florid, rhetorical figures, such as simile, exclamation, and apostrophe; and his language, built into long, stately, but comprehensible sentences, is abundant, melodious, and pleasing.
The Plain Style
At the other extreme from the ornate, the miscellaneous writers adopted great simplicity. Of this class, the best example is Izaac Walton (1593–1683), whose The Compleat Angler (1653) is the classic of its kind. His artless prose has a sweet and unaffected grace.
VIII. The Age of Dryden (1660–1700)
The Emergence of Modern Prose
Though the prose writing of the period is not great in bulk, it shows a profound change in style. Previous writers had done remarkable and beautiful work in prose, but their style had not yet found itself. It was wayward and erratic, often cumbrous and often obscure, and weighted with a Latinized construction and vocabulary. In Dryden's time prose begins definitely to find its feet. It acquires a general utility and a permanence; it is smoothed and straightened, simplified and harmonized. This is the age of average prose, and prepares the way for the work of Swift and Addison, who stand on the threshold of the modern prose style.
John Dryden: The First Great Exponent
Dryden's prose is almost entirely devoted to literary criticism. His Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668) is his longest single prose work and a major piece of English literary criticism. It treats, with openness of mind and a lack of dogmatizing, most of the major topics which interested contemporary dramatists. His style, though sometimes involved and obscure, with little slips of grammar, is on the average of high quality, and the impression the reader receives is one of great freshness and abounding vitality.
Illustrative Passage on Shakespeare:
"To begin, then with Shakespeare. He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there."
John Bunyan: The Plain Style
In the domain of Restoration prose, Bunyan alone contests the supremacy of Dryden. Except for Grace Abounding (1666), all Bunyan's major works are allegorical. The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), The Life and Death of Mr Badman (1680), and The Holy War (1682) display the allegory worked out with ease, force, and clearness.
Bunyan's style is unique in prose. Though it is undoubtedly based upon the great Biblical models, it is quite individual. It is homely, but not vulgar; strong, but not coarse; equable, but not monotonous; it is sometimes humorous but it is never ribald; rarely pathetic, but never sentimental. It has remained the pattern of a plain style, and is one of the masterpieces of the English language.
Illustrative Passage from The Pilgrim's Progress:
"I saw then in my dream, so far as this valley reached, there was on the right hand a very deep ditch; that ditch is it into which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold, on the left hand, there was a very dangerous quag, into which, if even a good man falls, he can find no bottom for his foot to stand on. Into that quag King David once did fall, and had no doubt therein been smothered, had not HE that is able plucked him out."
The Diarists: Pepys and Evelyn
By a coincidence it happened that the two most famous diary-writers in English were working at the same time. Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and John Evelyn (1620–1706) produced private documents with no formal pretensions to literary excellence. Yet the books are intimate, interesting, full of information concerning public and personal affairs, and containing illuminating comments on people and incidents.
Pepys's Diary, which opens on January 1, 1660, and continues until May 31, 1669, is the most frank and intimate revelation of a human life known to us. It shows an amazing lack of reticence, abounds in minute details of great personal and historical interest, and reveals Pepys as a man of the world, keenly interested in his material advancement, a lover of music and the theatre, intensely human with many endearing qualities and equally human failings.
IX. The Age of Pope and the Augustan Prose (1700–1750)
The Predominance of Prose
The age of Pope intensified the movement that had begun after the Restoration. The other great names of the period—Swift, Addison, Steele, Defoe—are those of prose-writers primarily, and prose-writers of a very high quality. Several factors contributed to the predominance of prose:
Political Writing: The rise of the two political parties gave fresh importance to men of literary ability, who were bribed with places and pensions. It was indeed the Golden Age of political pamphleteering.
The Clubs and Coffee-houses: Politicians are necessarily gregarious, and the increased activity in politics led to a great addition to the number of political clubs and coffee-houses, which became the foci of fashionable and public life.
Periodical Writing: The struggle for political mastery led both factions to issue a swarm of journals, run by a band of vigorous and facile prose-writers.
The New Publishing Houses: The interest in politics caused a great increase in the size of the reading public, arousing the activities of publishers who employed numbers of needy writers.
Jonathan Swift: The Greatest English Satirist
Swift is the greatest English satirist. Almost in one bound he attained to a mastery of English prose; and then maintained an astonishing level of excellence. His first noteworthy book was The Battle of the Books (1704), a half-allegorical, mock-heroic work in which books in a library literally contend with one another. A Tale of a Tub (1704) is regarded by many as Swift's best work, a religious allegory full of wit, brilliant imaginative power, and incisive thought. The style is terse and has a sustained vigour, pace, and colourfulness.
Gulliver's Travels (1726) resembles its fellow-allegory The Pilgrim's Progress in its popularity and human interest. The two earlier stages of the Travels have a charm and vivacity that delight old and young. The satire lurks in the allegory, but it is so delicately tinselled over that it does not repel. The crowded incidents are plausible and lively, and they are often spiced with a quaint and alluring humour; his comments upon mankind are shrewd and arresting, as well as satirical, and are yet not brutal nor obscene. The style is Swift's best: not mannered or laboured; clean, powerful, and tireless; easy without being slovenly, and as clear as summer noonday.
Illustrative Passage from Gulliver's Travels:
"The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health. I answered, that I understood both very well; for although my proper employment had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often upon a pinch I was forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a first-rate man-of-war among us, and such a boat as I could manage would never live in any of their rivers."
Joseph Addison: The Middle Style
Addison is one of the greatest prose stylists in English. His essays in The Tatler (1709), The Spectator (1711), and The Guardian (1713) are a faithful reflection of the life of the time viewed with an aloof and dispassionate observation. He set out to be a mild censor of the morals of the age, pointing out "those vices which are too trivial for the chastisement of the law, and too fantastical for the cognizance of the pulpit."
Addison's humour is of a rare order—delicately ironical, gentlemanly, tolerant, and urbane. His style has often been deservedly praised. It is the pattern of the middle style, never slipshod, or obscure, or unmelodious. He has an infallible instinct for the proper word, and an infallible ear for a subdued and graceful rhythm. His prose moves with a demure and pleasing grace, in harmony with his subject, with his object, and with himself.
Illustrative Passage from The Spectator:
"As I was yesterday morning walking with Sir Roger before his house, a country fellow brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr William Wimble had caught that very morning; and that he presented it with his service to him, and intended to come and dine with him. At the same time he delivered a letter, which my friend read to me as soon as the messenger left him.
'SIR ROGER,
'I desire you to accept of a jack, which is the best I have caught this season. I intend to come and stay with you a week, and see how the perch bite in the Black river. I observed with some concern, the last time I saw you upon the bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it; I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last week, which I hope will serve you all the time you are in the country.'"
Daniel Defoe: The Plain Narrator
Defoe's prose is of amazing bulk and variety. His fiction, produced in the latter part of his life, includes Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders (1722), and A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). At its best, as in the finest parts of Robinson Crusoe, his writing has a realism rarely approached by the most ardent of modern realists. This is achieved by Defoe's grasp of details and his unerring sense of their supreme literary value, a swift and resolute narrative method, and a plain and matter-of-fact style that inevitably lays incredulity asleep.
Illustrative Passage from Robinson Crusoe:
"I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was able to undertake it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I put a stop to my own inquiries into it, by this foolish answer: Let us first make it: I warrant I will find some way or other to get it along when it is done."
X. The Age of Transition (1740–1800)
The Development of Prose Style
In prose, the development of style was marked by a number of small improvements which in the aggregate represented no small advance. There was a perceptible increase in skill, due to increased practice; there was a growing perception of the beauties of rhythm and cadence; and in the purely formal sense, there was the appearance of the prose paragraph.
Samuel Johnson: The Dictator of Prose
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) is perhaps the most formidable figure in eighteenth-century prose. His Dictionary of the English Language (1747–55) was his greatest contribution to scholarship, vastly superior to any previous dictionary. The Rambler essays (1750–52) are full of deep thought and observation, though they were too obviously didactic to be popular. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759) is a philosophical novel, really a number of Rambler essays strung together. His Lives of the Poets (1777–81) contains criticism of great and permanent value.
Johnson's prose style has been the object of much ridicule, epitomized in the popular conception of "Johnsonese" as pompous, artificial, verbose prose. In his early work, the prose is heavy, rhetorical in structure, full of affectation, and highly Latinized. These mannerisms steadily disappear as we follow the course of his writings, until, in The Lives of the Poets, his prose has the ease, lucidity, force, and vigorous directness of his conversation.
Illustrative Passage from The Lives of the Poets:
"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. 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."
Edmund Burke: The Grand Style
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) shares with Gibbon the place of the greatest prose stylist of this period. His political works—speeches On American Taxation (1774), On Conciliation with the Colonies (1775), and Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)—are passionate in their pleading, rich in rhetorical effect, and brilliant in their marshalling of material.
Burke's style is marked by all the devices of the orator: much repetition, careful arrangement and balance of parts, copious use of rhetorical figures, variation of sentence structure, homely illustrations, and a swift, vigorous rhythm. It is full of colour and splendour, and is fired by an impassioned imagination. The skilful ordering of his ideas indicates a mind of extraordinary powers.
Illustrative Passage from Reflections on the Revolution in France:
"On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their Academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows!"
Edward Gibbon: The Historical Style
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), one of the greatest historical works in English. His prose style, deliberately cultivated as being most suited to his subject, is lordly and commanding, with a full, free, and majestic rhythm. Admirably appropriate to its gigantic subject, the style nevertheless has some weaknesses: though it never flags, and rarely stumbles, the very perfection of it tends to monotony, for it lacks ease and variety.
Illustrative Passage:
"Three days Mahomet and his companion were concealed in the cave of Thor, at the distance of a league from Mecca; and in the close of each evening, they received from the son and daughter of Abubeker a secret supply of intelligence and food. The diligence of the Koreish explored every haunt in the neighbourhood of the city; they arrived at the entrance of the cavern; but the providential deceit of a spider's web and a pigeon's nest is supposed to convince them that the place was solitary and inviolate."
XI. The Victorian Age (1830–1890)
The Expansion of Prose
With the immense production of the Victorian age, a wide range of prose style became observable. The general tendency was toward a useful middle style, as in the books of Southey and Hazlitt. Outside this mass of middle prose, we have a range from the greatest simplicity to the highest efforts of poetic prose.
Thomas Carlyle: The Prophetic Style
Carlyle (1795–1881) was a man of sterling honesty, of sagacious and powerful mind. His style is entirely his own. At first glance it seems rude and uncouth: with many capital letters in the German fashion, with broken phrases and ejaculations, he proceeds amid a torrent of whirling words. Yet he is flexible to a wonderful degree; he can command a beauty of expression that wrings the very heart: a sweet and piercing melody, with a suggestion, always present, yet always remote, of infinite regret and longing.
John Ruskin: The Ornate Style
Ruskin (1819–1900) wrote prose of immense volume and complexity. His diction is marked by a sweet and unforced simplicity, but his pages abound in purple passages marked by sentences of immense length, a gorgeous march of image and epithet, and a sumptuous rhythm that sometimes grows into actual blank verse capable of scansion. In his later books he eschewed his grandiose manner, but to the very end he was always able to rise to the lyrical mood.
Illustrative Passage from The Stones of Venice:
"Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in gray swirls of rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands."
Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Clear Style
Macaulay (1800–1859) wrote essays for The Edinburgh Review and a History of England (1849) that had an instant and enormous success. His style is entirely direct and clear, and free from any shade of doubt and hesitancy. He is fond of the short detached sentence, and his vocabulary is copious and expressive. His desire for brilliant effect resulted in a hard, self-confident manner, and a lack of broader outlines and deeper views.
XII. The Birth of Modern Literature (1890–1918)
The Continued Development of Prose
This period saw the growing importance of the novel as a literary form. Henry James (1843–1916) was one of the first to view the novel as an artistic form, concerned not with moral purpose but with the objective and impartial presentation of reality. His technique involved presenting his story through the consciousness of a single character, and the detailed study of the subtlest shades of human reactions.
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) developed a prose style that is one of the most individual and readily recognizable in English. His careful attention to grouping and rhythm and to technical devices such as alliteration enables him at his best to achieve a prose akin to poetry. He described his artistic aim as aspiring "to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music."
H.G. Wells and the Sociological Novel
Wells (1866–1946) wrote novels that presented a vivid picture of the contemporary social scene. His style has a spontaneous vitality, unfailing good humour, warmth of human understanding, and naturalness. His mature novels present real life with great accuracy and breadth.
XIII. The Inter-War Years (1918–1939)
The Novel as Interpreter of Life
The disillusionment of the post-War world is nowhere more clearly seen than in the novel. The master of the inter-War novelists was James Joyce (1882–1941), who evolved new techniques involving the "stream of consciousness" and the internal monologue. The presentation of the 'stream of consciousness', the use of the interior monologue, the detailed tracing of the freakish associations of ideas, and an allusive style were the chief weapons of the novelist attempting to write from within the mind of his character.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) wrote prose of genius, combining a keen sense of rhythmic and musical potentialities, a richly figurative style, and precision of images. Her penetrating insight equipped her admirably for probing the inner workings of the mind.
D.H. Lawrence: The Prophetic Novelist
Lawrence (1885–1930) combined a violent hatred of modern mechanized civilization with a love of the primitive and natural, and a passionate belief in the importance of the development of each unique individuality. At his best he was content to allow his ideas to emanate naturally from his characters, raising him to the heights of poetical utterance.
XIV. The Mid-Twentieth Century (1939–)
The Continuing Vitality of English Prose
The mid-twentieth century has seen the continued vitality and diversity of English prose. The revolution in publishing, particularly the development of the paperback, has made literature available to a wider public than ever before. The advent of television has stimulated interest in literature rather than reduced it.
The Essay and Literary Criticism
The popularity of the essay has continued undiminished. Writers such as Robert Lynd, J.B. Priestley, and Aldous Huxley have maintained the tradition of the personal essay. Literary criticism has flourished, with I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, and others developing new approaches to the study of literature.
The Novel in the Modern World
Contemporary novelists have explored new themes and techniques. Writers like Graham Greene have examined moral dilemmas in a brutal world. C.P. Snow has given insight into English society through his analysis of power. Evelyn Waugh began as a satirist and developed into a more serious novelist exploring themes of disillusion and faith. The novel continues to adapt and evolve, reflecting the complexities of modern life while maintaining the traditions of English prose.
XV. Conclusion: The Living Tradition of English Prose
The history of English prose is a testament to the remarkable vitality and adaptability of the English language. From the halting beginnings in Alfred's translations to the sophisticated techniques of modern novelists, prose has developed into the most versatile and widely used medium of expression in human culture.
Three elements have been central to this development:
The Mastery of Style: From the plain strength of Bunyan to the ornate beauty of Browne, from the clear precision of Swift to the majestic rhythms of Gibbon, English prose has demonstrated an extraordinary range of stylistic possibilities.
The Expansion of Forms: The development of the essay, the novel, biography, autobiography, and literary criticism has provided prose with increasingly sophisticated means of expression.
The Continuity of Tradition: Despite the many changes in language and society, the tradition of English prose has remained continuous. Modern writers build upon the achievements of their predecessors while developing new techniques to express new experiences.
English prose today stands as one of the great achievements of human culture—a medium capable of expressing the simplest observation and the most complex thought, of moving the heart and illuminating the mind, of capturing the ephemeral moment and articulating eternal truths.
