1 6 Prosscr Hall Frye 



coffee houses, with their assemblage of "wits" and their inter- 

 minable talk, are in part responsible ; but more so, probably, the 

 new comedy, the "comedy of manners," whose dialogue w'as in 

 reality the only model in existence of a prose at once practicable 

 and literary. But however it happened, the ideals of prose and 

 conversation had become very nearly identical in the minds of 

 Addison and his contemporaries. Not that they wrote exactly 

 as they talked ; that w^as of course impossible. But they aimed to 

 write as they would have liked to talk if they had been able. 

 They tend constantly to obliterate the distinction between the two 

 standards, the literary and the colloquial. Fluency, ease, dis- 

 cursiveness become the desiderata. Profundity comes to seem 

 pretentious, even a little absurd. Seriousness itself is in rather 

 bad taste. It is desirable to be suave, agreeable, perspicuous at 

 any price. Such is the false ideal which is mainly accountable 

 for Addison's shallowness and superficiality, for the peculiar list- 

 lessness and dejection which are the characteristic effects of his 

 style. His prose is all very pretty, no doubt. One quality of the 

 rarest in English it does at least possess — urbanity. But in the 

 long run it is extremely insipid and cloying.^ 



For this reason Swift is to be preferred in many respects to 

 Addison. At his best Swift is neither commonplace nor yet diffi- 

 cult. He is seldom urbane, often very coarse, sometimes very 

 Vulgar, occasionally extravagant and fantastical in his pursuit of 

 humor. Above all, he wants balance. With his age and himself 

 he is thoroughly out of tune, — capricious, self-walled, and arro- 

 gant. And from his infirmity of temper his style suffers sadly; 

 for as a general thing prose is much more closely affiliated than 

 poetry wdth character. Vivacity counts for a good deal more in 

 poetry than in prose : about a poetic style there is always some- 

 thing exceptional and factitious ; while prose, on the contrary, 

 requires a sustained and regular cft'ort. And yet with all these 

 drawbacks Swift's prose is at its best the best of the period. 



Nevertheless, there is this to be said for Addison. It is neither 

 possible nor desirable, perhaps, that a moralist's ideas should be 



^Matthew Arnold. Literary Influence of Academies; Essays in Crit- 

 icism, First Series (Eversley), pp. 64-60. 



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