The Development of Literary Style

1. Poetry. In surveying the poetical style of the age one is aware of conflicting tendencies, a state of affairs quite in keeping with the transitional nature of the time.

(a) The lyrical style shows a decline from the natural splendors of the Elizabethan age; but it shows an increase in care, in polish, and in actual metrical dexterity. Moreover, in the best examples of the time we find a melodious resonance and beauty that is quite peculiar to the period. The lyric of Carew quoted on p. illustrates this felicity both of sound and expression. The startling “metaphysical” quality of the works of many of the poets has been commented upon. It is revealed at its worst in the works of John Cleveland (1613–58), whose more violent efforts came to be known as “Clevelandisms.” The following is a mild example of his manner:

The flowers, called out of their beds,

Start and raise up their drowsy heads;

And he that for their colour seeks,

Will find it mantling in her cheeks,

Where roses mix; no civil war

Between her York and Lancaster.

The marigold, whose courtier face

Echoes the sun, and doth unlace

Her at his rise, at his full stop

Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop,

Mistakes her cue, and doth display:

Thus Phillis antedates the day.

On Phillis, walking before Sunrise

(b) In blank verse conflicting movements are also apparent. In Milton the style reaches a magnificent climax. But in the drama, especially in the drama of minor playwrights of the ability of Suckling and Davenant, it becomes a huddle of verse and prose, so bad that one hesitates to say where the verse ends and the prose begins. It is the last stage of poetical decrepitude.

(c) The heroic couplet begins to appear, ushering in its long reign. We have it appearing as early as Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar (1579) and Sandys’s Ovid (1626); but the true stopped couplet, as used by Dryden and developed by Pope, is usually set down to the credit of Cowley’s Davideis (1637), or Denham’s Cooper’s Hill (1641), or the shorter poems of Edmund Waller (1606–87), who wrote stopped couplets as early as 1623. The heroic couplet will receive further notice in the next chapter.

TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

Date Poetry Drama Prose

Lyric Epic Descriptive Comedy Tragedy Historical Religious Miscellaneous

Wither

Massinger

1630 Milton Cowley Ford

Herbert Milton

Cowley Suckling

Suckling Davenant

1640 Carew Fuller

Denham

Browne

Crashaw Milton

Vaughan Fuller Howell

Clarendon Browne

Herrick Baxter

Lovelace

1650 Davenant Taylor

Marvell Hobbes

Barrow Walton

Cowley

Milton Chamberlayne

1660 Fuller

1670 Milton

2. Prose. In prose also we see the opposing tendencies. The principal movement is toward ornate prose, in Browne, Jeremy Taylor, Clarendon, and in the Scottish writer William Drummond (1585–1649), whose Cypress Grove (1616) is in the fashionable funereal vein. In the middle style we have the precision of Hobbes in The Leviathan. At the other extreme from the ornate, the miscellaneous writers adopt great simplicity. Of this class, which includes Howell and Felltham, the best example is Isaac Walton, whose artless prose is shown in the following specimen:

Piscator. O sir, doubt not but that angling is an art. Is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold! and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend’s breakfast. Doubt not, therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your learning; the question is rather, whether you be capable of learning it? for angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so—I mean with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice; but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be like virtue, a reward to itself.

The Compleat Angler