in theory and practice, the beginnings of the Baroque literary fashion must be sought in the works of the men who inaugurated the anti-Ciceronian movement.11 Some scholars and writers of the second half of the 16th century were searching for new ways of utterance that would be better suited to the weightiness of the matter, the worthiness of the subject, the soundness of the argument and the vivacity of invention (as Bacon intimated), than the rhetorical Ciceronian manner. Looking back into antiquity for their models, they preferred the sober "attic" style of some Greek orators to the florid "asian" eloquence. They formed their style according to the Roman authors of the Silver Age who possessed more of the attic qualities than the Augustan writers. In this way the Senecan literary vogue was introduced, the works of Tacitus, Velleius Paterculus and Pliny the Younger were eagerly read and studied. The pioneers of the movement in humanistic Latin literature were M. A. Muret and Joest Lips, better known under his latinized name of Justus Lipsius. (The latter edited the works of Tacitus in 1575 and of Seneca in 1605.) The same tendency spread into vernacular tongues and was adopted by Montaigne in French, Bacon in English, Gracian in Spanish, Malvezzi in Italian. In addition the names of Ben Jonson, Joseph Hall and John Donne in England may be noted. Some of these, according to their temper and their chosen models, strove after conciseness, some after ingenious subtlety; others sought sombre gravity. They all aimed at the accurate portraying of reality, especially of the inner reality of their minds. The terse and sententious Bacon, the informal and discursive Montaigne, attempted to follow the movement of their thoughts and reproduce it in their respective styles. Such manner of writing the "Attic" prose was a fit medium for critics and philosophers; soon it was made use of by the authors of satires, characters, meditations and sermons. novum The "Attic" prose was recognized as a new style dicendi genus12 by contemporaries, whether they favoured it or not. Bacon himself criticized its development in the Latin version of his work De augmentis scientiarum: "Somewhat sounder is another form of style, yet neither is it innocent of some vain shows, which is likely to follow in time upon this copious and luxuriant oratorical manner. It consists wholly in this: that the words be sharp and pointed; sentences concised; a style in short that may be called "turned" rather than fused. Whence it happens that everything dealt with by this kind of art seems rather ingenious than lofty. Such a style is found in Seneca very freely used, in Tacitus and the younger Pliny more moderatly; and it is beginning to suit the ears of our age as never before."13 John Earle in his Micro-cosmographie ridiculed the "selfeconceited man": "He prefers Ramus before Aristotle, Paracelsus before Galen, and whosoever with most paradox is commended and Lipsius for his hopping stile, before either Tully or Quintilian."14 Another of Earle's characters - a "pretender to Learning" "has his sentences for Company, some scatterings of Seneca and Tacitus, which are good upon all occasions."15. Owen Feltham, an adherent of the new style, declared: "When I read a rarely sententious man, I admire him to my own impatiency. I cannot read some parts of Seneca above two leaves together. He raises my soul to a contemplation which sets me a thinking, on more than I can imagine"16 Feltham, in describing the new style, adds a new characteristic: "A good Orator should pierce the ear, allure the eye, and invade the mind of his hearers. And this is Seneca's opinion: 'Fit words are better than fine ones'. I like not those that are injudiciously made, but such as be expressively significant; that lead the mind to something, besides the naked term."17 The last words point out one quality of the best Baroque writing, namely its suggestive function. Some writers surprise the reader with bold conceits, trying to indicate more than can actually be put into words. Others hide their meaning in significant darkness of utterance. Chapman writes in the dedicatory epistle to his poem "Ovid's Banquet of Sense": Obscurity in affection of words and indigested conceits, is pedantical and childish; but where it shroudeth itself in the heart of his subject, uttered with fitness of figure and expressive epithets, with that darkness I still labour to be shadowed."18 But therein lay a possibility of corruption. Ridiculous contortions and hyperboles, inane conceits appeared in the works of imitators and continuators. Seventeenth century prose fell into pompous verbosity, whimsical exaggeration or dull pedantry. The Baroque style which began as a striving after fitness and efficacy of expression degenerated into worse affectations than the rhetorical ornateness of the Renaissance. II. BAROQUE PROSE IN ENGLAND. The endeavour to replace fine words by fit ones had a decisively modifying influence upon the syntactic structure of the sentence. Seventeenth century prose acquired an aphoristic, sententious character.19 Bacon and Feltham have been quoted to testify to the Senecan origin of this tendency. Seneca was appreciated for his terse points, both in the original and, later, in the translation by Thomas Lodge. For example: A man sits by his friend that it sicke: I allow it; but if he does it in hope to be his heire, he is a Vulture, he expecteth carrion.20 Those who scorned affected periods and an empty chime of words21 were attracted by Seneca's familiar easiness and clearness.22 It was the aim of the attic writers to bring into use the plain style - genus humile.23 Joseph Hall (1574-1656) may be taken as a representative of this type; Thomas Fuller in his "Worthies of England" wrote of him: "He was commonly called our English Seneca, for the purenesse, plainnesse, and fulnesse of his style." It will be seen from the following quotations that his commended plainness is not a quality of an unsophisticated mind. Not onely commission makes a sinne: A man is guiltie of all those sinnes he hateth not, If I cannot avoid all, yet I will hate all.24 No sooner he [the serpent] is entred, but he tempteth: he can no more be idle, then harmlesse; I do not see him at any other tree; he knew there was no danger in the rest, I see him at the tree forbidden.25 Abraham must leave his countrey, and kindred, and live amongst strangers; The calling of God never leaves men, where it findes them; The earth is the Lords, and all places are alike to the wise and the faithful: If Chaldea had not been grossely idolatrous, Abraham had not left it; no bond must tie us to the dangers of infection.26 Hall's periods are composed of short sentences paratactically connected; in each member the subject matter is treated from a different point of view. Thus in the first specimen a general reflection is followed by a personal application, in the second there occurs a repeated transition from the objective narrative to a subjective presentation. In Hall's style an inner movement joins the particular to the general, the concrete to the abstract; the inner and the outer reality are closely correlated, temporal events are shown to be illustrations of eternal truths. Such a style may well be termed Baroque. "Seine innere Bewegung ist eine von Pol zu Pol springende Empfindung”, says F. Strich27 of the lyrical style of the seventeenth century. The same might apply to Hall's prose. At the same time Hall's periods have little syntactical coherence; their members are simply placed one by the side of the other. This is an important departure from the Renaissance manner in which the periods fused into a complex pattern of coordination and subordination. This Baroque method of writing may lend itself to conciseness or discursiveness with equal facility. The sentence may deal with one idea and throw light on it from different standpoints: Hitherto hath Sarah bin Abraham's wife, now Egypt hath made her his sister; feare hath turned him from an husband to a brother; No strength of faith can exclude some doubtings: God hath said, I will make thee a great nation; Abraham saith, the Aegyptians will kill me; He that liveth by his faith, yet shrinketh, sinneth.28 Or the sentence may wander off in any direction that may catch its author's fancy; instances of extraordinary garrulity may be gathered in the latter part of the century. I cannot hope my memory should reach my past fancyes when both it and my pen together cannot keepe pace with my present ones; such a strange running imagination I have, thet when tis once in my pen can folow it but at a large distance, and most by the track and yet commonly I doe but gleane after it, I lose halfe my thoughts between my fancy and my tongue but tis well i doe for otherwise I should bee an unconscionable talker, perhaps I should find and utter them all if I spoke trough the nose they being lost between my forehead and mouth.29 Two manners of Baroque writing, then, are to be distinguished: the terse and the discursive. (Professor Croll has designated them the curt style and the loose style.) 30 The "curt" style is that of Bacon's Essays and Jonson's Discoveries. It was taken up by authors of characters and essays who wanted to compress much observation into a short line or paragraph. His submission is ambitious hypocrisie; his religion, politike insinuation; no action is safe from a jealous construction. (Joseph Hall, Characters of Vertues and Vices, 1608)31 ... her chiefest vertue is a good husband. For She is Hee. (Sir Thomas Overbury, Characters, 1614) 32 Though they never expound the Scripture, they handle it much, The shadow kills the growth; so much, that we see the grand- (Ben Jonson, Discoveries, 1640)35 And Odo his Brother was a prisoner even at the time of his death: So heavy with some High Mindes is an overweight of Obligation: Or otherwise, Great Deserves do perchance grow intolerable Presumers. (Sir Henry Wotton, Reliquiae Wottonianae, 1651) 36 This series of quotations illustrates the history of the "curt" style which survives even longer than 1651; but later it is employed sparingly by the cultivators of the "loose" style to serve as a contrast to their enormously long periods. It is not always easy to draw a dividing line between the rambling discourse of the "loose" style and the chains of staccato sentences which constitute the "curt" period. The latter may have two or three members, but series of six or more members are not uncommon: To have the Secrets of a King, who happens to have too many, is to have a King in Chains: He must not only, not part with her [his mistress], but he must in his own Defence dissemble his dislike: The less kindness he hath, the more he must shew: There is great difference between being muffled, and being tied: He was the first, not the last. (Halifax, Character of King Charles II)37 Most of Hall's sentences already quoted are of a similar type. It may be seen that not a shortness of the whole period, but a deliberate brevity of all its component parts is a distinguishing mark of the "curt" style. Consequently, the following passage from a sermon of John Donne forms a transition to the loose style: The rebuke of sins is like the fishing of Whales; the Marke is great enough; one can scarce misse hitting; but if there be not sea room enough and line enough, and a dexterity in letting out that line, he that hath fixed his harping iron, in the Whale, endangers himselfe, and his boate; God hath made us fishers of Men; and when we have struck a Whale, touch'd the conscience of any person, which thought himselfe above the rebuke, and increpation, it struggles, and strives, and as much as it can, endevours to draw fishers, and boate, the Man and his fortune into contempt, and danger. (John Donne, Fifty sermons)39 Even such passages cannot compete for prolixity with the whimsical musings often found in the early essays of Sir John Temple. (One example has been quoted on page 44 and here is another): Whither it bee a faintnesse in my mind complying with the weather which may render it like my body disabled or unfit for any vigorous action (as indeed I find it hath most hold of mee in this season) or whither it bee rather a discomposure caused by a meslèe of severall passions whereof none is strong enough entirely to gaine the field and none soe weake as to quit it, for if that were the current being turn'd one way would confine it selfe to some continued channell, but this I speake of is a crowd of restlesse capering antique fancies, bounding here and there, fixing noe where, building in one half houre castles in Ireland, monasteryes in France, palaces in Virginia, dancing at a wedding, weeping at a buriall, inthron'd like a King, inragg'd like a begger, a lover, an indifferent person and sometimes things of as little relation one to another as the greate Turke and a redd herring, |