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1828.] sbR7- 0 J 
ECHARD'S CONTEMPT OF CLERGY. 
Ecuarp is one of that strange school of prose writers who flourished 
in the interval between the decadence of the stately style of the writers 
of the days of Queen Elizabeth, and the establishment, in Queen Anne’s 
reign, of that style of writing which, with httle modification, has pre- 
vailed ever since. The prose writers of the days of the elder queen 
delighted in long, winding, involved sentences, dovetailed with innu- 
merable parentheses, and spun through whole pages without much - 
regard to the niceties of punctuation. They rejoiced also in abundant 
quotations, and strewed their margins thickly with references. Their 
writings have much more a foreign than an English air, and very often 
sound as if the author had thought in Latin. In the midst of this, how- 
ever, we very often meet with a single sentence of exquisitemelody, though, 
in general, this occurs more in the writings of the immediate successors 
of the Elizabethan writers than in her own time. Spenser furnishes some 
such occasionally in his Dialogue upon Ireland. His description of the wild 
flowers of Irish poesy, for instance, is a most harmonious passage. But 
we seldom meet them in Sir Philip Sidney ; and we believe if the most 
noisy admirers of the Arcadia of that mirror of chivalry were to confess 
the truth, they would have to avow that they often were inclined to nod 
over the tedious prosing of his interminable periods. 
In the divines of the days of King James and King Charles I.— 
particularly in Jeremy Taylor—such passages abound ; and even Baxter 
furnishes them occasionally. But still the texture of the style was 
coloured by their continual studies in Latin. Most, indeed, of the great 
prose writers of the time were accustomed to write habitually in that 
language. Milton’s English sentences are peculiarly cast in that form, 
and their ruggedness forms a strange contrast to the “ linked sweetness 
long drawn out,” of his yersification. The unhappy nature of the sub- 
jects on which he chose to write—the squabbling polemics and politics of 
the day—afforded but little scope for fine writing ; but the genius of the 
author of Paradise Lost occasionally glances forth even in these ungenial 
subjects. The sentence in which he compares England to an eagle clear- 
ing his long-abused sight—that in which he gives an inkling of his future 
poetic labours—and some others, are now familiar to the general reader. 
A hundred years after they were written, they were so completely 
unknown, that Warburton, in his controversy with Lowth, thought him- 
self quite secure in taking one of them verbatim, or at least with such 
alterations only as adapted it to the purpose on which he was engaged ; 
and Lowth, a professed English scholar, actually selected it in his answer, 
asa point of attack, for its bombastic fustian! Even now, with the 
exception of these purpurei panni, Milton’s prose works are unknown to 
the literary world ; and it is felt a much greater task to read his English 
than his Latin. Without deserving the very high praise of classicality 
which has been poured upon them, by persous, however, not very much 
distinguished as classical scholars, the two defences of the English people 
flow in a smooth, and sometimes even a Ciceronian style. The Doctrine 
and Discipline of Divorce, the Defence of Smectymnuus, &c. are as 
harsh and unmusical as “ a brazen canstick turned, or a dry wheel 
grating upon an axletree.” 
The circumstances of the time filled the serious writers on the par- 
liamentarian side with Hebraisms and Grecisms; and a display of such 
M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No.36. 4 
