Developviciit of Form in Litcmtujr. 19 



In the general investigation pursued before the pubHca- 

 tion of the article alluded to above, it was noted, first, that 

 Macaulay, Channing, Emerson, and Bartol wrote a great 

 number of simple sentences, while the earlier authors very- 

 few. Chaucer's Mclibens showed but four per cent of these ; 

 Hooker's first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity, thirteen ; but 

 Macaulay 's Essay on History, not less than forty. It was evi- 

 dent that Macaulay and his fellows were under some constraint 

 to write simple sentences only. But it was further noticed 

 that when any one of these writers found it necessary to use 

 a long or complex period, it was likely to turn out very long 

 and complex indeed ; so that in this they agreed with and 

 even rivalled the authors of the first era. Here then were 

 in operation two active principles, one analytic, one synthetic. 

 So far as appeared after an extended examination, Channing 

 and Macaulay were the first to write in accordance with the 

 former. The prosaists who since Chaucer had employed the 

 latter appeared to show a progressive improvement, both in 

 decrease of predication and in articulation, — or, as Spencer 

 would say, in bringing the heterogeneous out of the homo- 

 geneous. For the prose periods of Chaucer and Spenser 

 abounded in coordinate rather than subordinate constructions 

 of every kind. A comparison of the prose with the poetry of 

 each proved their poetic sentences much more organic and 

 articulate, and much less synthetical. There were far less 

 predications in the latter, the periods did not seem half so 

 long. In short, their poetry seemed as simple and clear as 

 anybody's, but their prose was practically unreadable. The 

 prose might really be of the same kind as the poetry, but was 

 at least centuries behind it in sentential development. 



The analytical principle as observed in Channing and 

 Macaulay appeared to mean, Put in a simple sentence no 

 more than can be brought before the mind pictorially or sym- 

 bolically in a single view. If this meaning be yet but poten- 

 tial, not yet translated into successive propositions, let it be 

 realized to the mind and expressed by instalments in some 

 logical order, each fact or judgment, since an integral part 



355 



