to say the truth tis at least a paineless posture of mind if not something more, and why not? abortive births have the leasure in conception equall to others, and escape the paine of bringing forth.39

This is one type of the loose style, characterized by artificial formlesness; it is indeed little more than a haphazard piling of sentence upon sentence.

Another type shows a stronger syntactical coherence: its periods are arranged into an intricate pattern, and often achieve fine rhytmical effects. The masters of this style, Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, were repeatedly called Ciceronians.40 This, however, cannot be maintained. The main trend of seventeenth century prose was anti-Ciceronian;41 and if there is a great resemblance between the polished Renaissance style and some types of Baroque writings, their principles of composition are rather different. Let us consider a sentence of a truly Renaissance sound, for instance the opening of R. Hooker's first book Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity:

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers; because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regiment is subject, but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider. Here is surely no stiff symmetry, but a careful balance of coordinate and subordinate clauses. The period has an easy and harmonious movement which proceeds without interruption from the first to the last word. Let us now compare it with a passage chosen from a minor 17th century writer:

Now though we reverence Moses more (as we ought to doe) then these his condisciples, because inspired so far aboue them with the immediate spirit of Almighty God, yet ought we neuerthelesse to reuerence them and the wisdome of their fables, however not vnderstood by euery body: his condisciples I call them, because they read bothe vnder their AEgyptian teachers one lesson, & were (as Moses himself sayes) expert in the learning of the Aegyptians; yea, many of them (and Poets all) were, to speake fitlyer, the teachers of that Learning themselves, and Masters therein no lesse then Moses.

(Henry Reynolds, Mythomystes, 1633?) 42

The beginnig of this period is a quite symmetrical construction of two parts, related by the conjunctions though and yet. But then an epexegetic statement is added - "his condisciples I call them" - referring to the word "condisciples" in the initial clauses. The reason of this statement is explained in three parallel clauses subordinated to it.

Certainly, in the place marked by the colon, there is a rift in the construction of the period, both parts are loosely jointed together. So this is the usual method of the loose style: when

the sentence is seemingly brought to an end, an unexpected continuation is attached to it. The connection is formed by such terms as which, so, for, and certainly, and no marvel, nor etc. Also the new members may be linked by means of an absoluteparticiple or an appositional construction.

There is no deformity but in monstrosity; wherein, notwith-
standing, there is a kind of beauty; nature so ingeniously contriv-
ing the irregular parts, as they become sometimes more remark-
able than the principal fabric.
(Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici)43

It should be no interruption to your pleasures, to hear me often
say that I love you, and that you are as much my meditations
as my self: I often compare not you and me, but the sphear in
which your resolutions are, and my wheel; both I hope concentrique
to God: for me thinks the new Astronomie is thus appliable well,
that we which are a little earth, should rather move toward God,
than that he which is fulfilling, and can come no whither, should
move toward us.

(John Donne, Letter to Sir H. G., circa 1609) 44

In the quotation from Donne, again an unexpected asymmetry is introduced. But Baroque prose has still other means of exciting surprise: the main effect is sometimes reserved for the end of the sentence which culminates in a striking word or an ingenious metaphor.

Or the sense of the whole statement is kept in suspense until, at last, it is resolved by an important key-word or key-phrase.

I know that empty and dark spirits will complain of palpable night; but those that beforehand have a radiant and light-bearing intellect, will say they can pass through Corinna's garden without the help of a lantern.

(G. Chapman, Ovid's Banquet of Sense,
Dedicatory epistle; 1598)

So if the spiritual Antipodes of this world, the Sons of God,
that walk with feet opposed in wayes contrary to the Sons of
men, shall be said to fall, when they fall to repentance, to
mortification, to a religious negligence, and contempt of the
pleasures of this life, truly their fall is upward, they fall to-
wards heaven.
(J. Donne, LXXX Sermons, publ. in 1640)

And I think, those that can believe all Histories and Romances;
all the world have agreed together to juggle mankind into a
common belief of ungrounded fables; That the sound senses of
multitudes together may deceive them, and Laws are built upon
Chimeras; That the gravest and wisest Judges have been
Murderers, and the sagest persons Fools, or designing impostors:
I say those that can believe this heap of absurdities, are either
more credulous than those whose credulity they reprehend; or
else have some extraordinary evidence of their perswasion, viz.
That 'tis absurd and impossible there should be a witch or
Apparition.

(Joseph Glanvil, Saducismus Triumphatus; 1681) 45

It is true that some Baroque writers display a worse redundancy than any Renaissance author; the point of transition from the Renaissance style to the "loose" Baroque is sometimes hard to fix, yet a fundamental difference underlies both styles: the one is intended to please the ear, the other aims at surprising the mind. The finely constructed periods of the Renaissance are embellished by rhetorical figures; seventeenth century prose, while using and sometimes abusing tropes, points and conceits attempts to reproduce sudden movements, repetitions and turns of thought.

The verbalism of Baroque prose arose, then, not from the decadence of Renaissance ornateness but from the excess of the opposing reaction. The new style was primarily a medium for expressing introspection and reflection. Its cultivators were never weary of tracing the inner working of the mind, sharing Browne's opinion that: "We carry with us the wonders we seek without us: There is all Africa and her prodigies in us”.

III. BAROQUE PROSE IN AMERICA.

The first authors residing in the American colonies of England had been born and educated in the mother country; they had to send or bring their manuscripts to London for publication. The American writings were but a part of English literature. Even later in the 17th century, when the colonies set up their own printing presses and the young men born in the new continent grew to be authors in their turn, most of the reading matter still came from England.46 We might therefore fairly expect to find the literary fashions of England mirrored in American prose and poetry. It would be strange if American writings should not bear the stamp of the Baroque century.

On the other hand, the conditions in the new world were not favourable to the purely stylistic values of the new manner. If the Puritans formed a good percentage of the population in England, the public of New England was wholly composed of these austere dissenters. The Puritans had already opposed the Renaissance way of living and feeling in England and the Baroque humanism conserved much of the Renaissance heritage. No wonder that the Puritan readers were not attracted by the "Attic" authors. Nor would they listen to the sonorous eloquence that was cultivated by the divines and bishops of the Church of England. But they found their inspiration in the books of the Old Testament and in the religious and moral works of a more severe style. Thus Cotton Mather, a leading New England minister, pronounced his opinion that the Latin of an Erasmus

of a Calvin, or of a Witsius was preferable to Cicero's.47 And John Cotton, Mather's grandfather, declared he had to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin before he went to sleep.48

At first the Puritans were not only indifferent to a deliberately stylistic effort, but were often opposed to it. The same John Cotton, when a scholar in Cambridge, England, was well known as a brilliant orator. His grandson wrote of him: "He used such Florid Strains, as extremely recommended him unto the most, who relished the Wisdom of Words above the Words of Wisdom."49 Later, having ambraced sterner & religious views, John Cotton abandonned the use of pompous mannerisms; his works written after his emigration to America are dull in style and unadorned, as are those of the majority of seventeenth century writers in America.

According to a historian of American literature "the American publications were so monotonous, in body and in soul, that without constant reference to title-pages no human being could guess whether a given paragraph was written by an Elizabethan or by his godly grandchildren under King William III."50 Still there are some livelier exceptions to this regrettable rule: the caustic satirist Nathaniel Ward; Mrs. Bradstreet the gentle authoress of "Meditations"; the anonymous author of the "Burwell papers"; Cotton Mather — “the literary Behemoth of New England" all achieved peculiar styles of their own. (Their works, as the most pronounced specimens of literary Baroque in America, will be discussed in special chapters.)

Yet even the rest of American authors could not entirely escape the stylistic tendencies of the time. A number of pure Baroque sentences, both of the "curt" and the "loose" type, may be found in their books, (Examples of the "curt" style only are given here :)

But with what Conscience King James did persecute Puritans,
I judge not: the judgement of such things is with the Lord.

(John Cotton [1585-1652], The Bloudy Tenent Washed)51

Of this we do not inquire. It is that we do beleeve.

(Thomas Hooker [1586-1647], A Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline)52

Our Sister Patience, whose desired company is as needful as delightfull; Tis like the Wolfe will send the scattered sheep in one: the common Pirate gathers up the loose and scattered Navie: the slaughter of the Witnesses by that bloody Beast unite the Independents and Presbyterians.

(Roger Williams [1599?-1683], The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution)53

There is a constant light; the soul sees sin and death continually before it; God's arrows stick fast in the soul and cannot be plucked out.

(Thomas Shepard [1605—1649], The Sound Believer)54

The Cross is worshipped; The Reliques of Martyrs are adored;
The honour due to God alone is given to the creature.

(Increase Mather [1639-1723],

An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences)55

All these quotations were taken from the works of New England ministers. It is evident that the learned divines were more under the influence of English literary taste than the lay authors who were less versed in literature and wrote in a more colloquial style.

IV. NATHANIEL WARD (1578-1652?).

Nathaniel Ward, like many other Puritan divines of his time, got into conflict with Archbishop Laud and was driven out of his Essex parish. In 1634 he sailed for America where he was to stay for some thirteen years. He is known as the author of a curious pamphlet entitled "The Simple Cobler of Aggawamm in America" which was written in New England, but printed in London in 1647. This booklet contains biting satire on the political state of England and a rather violent attack on religious toleration.

Nathaniel Ward delighted in fantastic words and quaint phrases, and, for that reason, has been called a "belated Euphuist" by V. L. Parrington.56 This, of course, is a loose application of the term; the stylistic analyses of Lyly's prose undertaken by Weymouth, Landmann, Child and Croll have sufficiently shown what Euphuism is and what it is not.57 The meaning of the word "Euphuist" is the same here as when used by M. C. Tyler58 who referred to the degenerated Euphuism of John Donne, Wither, Quarles and George Herbert. It is obvious that by "Euphuism" Parrington means some mannerisms of the Baroque style in literature.

Tyler has summarized Ward's affectations; he finds in his writings a fondness for antitheses, enjoyment of quirks and turns and freaks of phraseology, pursuit of puns and metaphors, delight in outlandish and uncouth words.59 All later historians of American literature have accepted and repeated this account of the embellishments used by Ward; the essential feature of his style, however, namely the structure of his sentences, still remains to be commented upon.

The constant play with antitheses and parallelism by which symmetry is at first indicated and then broken off, is