INTRODUCTION xxiii 



j'/jomme, describes it as negligent and infected by 

 foreign idioms, but agreeable and interesting ; not like 

 the perusal of a book, but conversation with a com- 

 panion. Johnson hailed him as the first writer who 

 gave cadence to English prose and paid him the flattery 

 of imitation, as he did Sir Thomas Browne, with 

 perhaps even greater fidelity. One has but to com- 

 pare Temple's steady current, deserving Clarendon's 

 favourite epithet " flowing," with the comparatively 

 uneven and rugged periods of John Evelyn, or even 

 Clarendon himself, to feel the justice of Johnson's 

 judgment ; but the Doctor was perhaps a semi-tone 

 too dogmatic, and might have included Dryden among 

 the first of the prose prophets. 



Swift dwells upon Temple's remarkable power of 

 adapting the style of his letters to the character cf his 

 correspondent, and declares that he advanced our Eng- 

 lish tongue to as great perfection as it can well bear. 

 Hallam thinks that he has less eloquence than Boling- 

 broke, but is free from his restlessness and ostentation. 

 Macaulay, with much condescension and generosity, 

 for he confesses frankly that he does not like Temple's 

 character and Style, says a greater historian than 

 Macaulay, is the image of character pronounces his 

 prose to be singularly lucid and melodious, superficially 



