a favourite method of Ward. He is always ready to postpone the ending of a sentence by an addition thereto :

A king that lives by Law, lives by love; and he that lives above
Law, shall live under hatred doe what he can.

60

He is a good king that undoes not his Subjects by one of his unlimited Prerogatives: and they are a good People that undoe not their Prince, by any one of their unbounded Liberties, be they the very least.61

This is the feature which Saintsbury has called the fatal habit of jointing on relative and epexegetic clauses,62 and by which the balance of the Baroque sentence is disturbed.

They which divide in Religion, divide in God; they which divide in Him, divide beyond Genus Generalissimum, where there is no reconciliation, without atonement; that is, without uniting in Him, who is One, and in his Truth, which is also one.63

A relative clause, very often parallel or antithetic clauses, may be attached any word or phrase of the preceding member. In this way complicated periods arise, presenting a number of symmetries asymmetrically linked. At first sight they remind one of the balanced Renaissance manner, but actually they are found to be distorted periods with dislocated members.

Either I am in an Appoplexie, or that man is in a Lethargie, who doth not now sensibly feele God shaking the heavens over his head the earth under his feet: The Heavens so, as the sun begins to turne into darknesse, the Moon into blood, the Starres to fall down to the ground; So that little Light of Comfort or Counsell is left to the sonnes of men: The Earth so, as the foundations are failing, the righteous scarce know where to finde rest, the inhabitants stagger like drunken men: it is in a manner dissolved both in Religions and Relations: and no marvell; for, they have defiled it by transgressing the Lawes, changing the Ordinances, and breaking the Everlasting Covenant.64

Some passages from the Simple Cobler are as fantastic as the most garullous periods of Sir William Temple; but the "curt" style forms the larger portion of the text. The most curious type of this style is the period of three short members: the first part suggests the contents of the whole period; in the remaining members the same idea is considered without much progression.65 The only movement is in the imagination of the writer who presents different pictures of the same situation. Sathan is now in his passion, he feeles his passion approaching; hee loves to fish in royled waters.66

Although Ward could handle all forms of the "loose" style, the curt manner was the fittest vehicle for his sarcasm.

Wee have a strong weaknesse in New England that when wee are speaking, wee know not how to conclude: wee make many ends, before we make an end: the fault is in the climate; we cannot helpe it though we can, which is the Arch infirmity in

all morality: Wee are so near the West pole, that our Longitudes are as long, as any wise man would wish, and somewhat longer. I scarce know any Adage more gratefull, than Grata brevitas.67

Ward's pamphlet is indeed a variegated collection of Baroque sentences, to an extent not found elsewhere in American prose.

V. MRS. ANNE BRADSTREET (1612-1672).

The wife of Governor Bradstreet of Massachusetts was celebrated by her compatriots as "the tenth Muse lately sprung up in America".63 She composed long historical and didactic poems in the manner of the French poet Du Bartas69 and the English Baroque poet Quarles.

Her verses are no longer admired, but the short sketch of her life that she wrote for her children may still move the sympathetic reader. A simple pathos underlies the story of an English girl who, at the age of eighteen, had left her mother country for the unfriendly coast of New England. “After a short time" she writes, "I changed my condition and was married, and came into this country, where I found a new world and new manners, at which my heart rose. But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and was joined to the Church of Boston."70

A more elaborate stylistic effort is displayed in her "Meditations Divine and Moral".71 They are a collection of aphorisms and sentences, certainly not betraying a strikingly original mind but, as far as their structure is concerned, presenting characteristic specimens of the Baroque prose forms. The initial aphorisms are of the terse type:

Some labourers have hard hands, and old sinners have brawny consciences.

In another sentence let us take notice of an ingenious asymmetry caused by balancing a pronoun and verb against a noun and its qualification.

A prosperous state makes secure Christian but adversity makes him consider.

Further on the meditations expand into longer passages; they manifest more emotion; and finally they develop into eloquent periods culminating in metaphors or resounding words.

So it is with wealth, honors, and pleasures of this world, which miserably delude men and make them put great confidence in them; but when death threatens and distress lays hold upon them they prove like the reeds of Egypt that pierce instead of supporting, like empty wells in the time of drought, that those that go to find water in them return with their empty pitchers ashamed.

Here is also the great court of justice erected, which is always kept by conscience who is both accuser, excuser, witness, and judge, whom no bribes can pervert nor flattery cause to favor, but as he finds the evidence so he absolves or condemns; yea, so absolute is his court of judicature that there is no appeal from it no, not to the court of Heaven itself.

This modest American counterpart of Pascal's "Pensées" is therefore to be appreciated for the fine gradation of its form, ranging from the simplest to the most ambitious constructions of the Baroque sentence.

VI. "THE BURWELL PAPERS".

So far we have treated only the literature of New England, but the southern colonies, too, had a share in the development of Baroque Prose in America. Their contribution was the anonymous Burwell Papers.72 The manuscript was long kept in the possession of the Burwell family in Virginia; hence the name attaching to it.

The Papers contain an account of a popular uprising against Governor Berkeley. They were evidently written by an opponent of the rebels, as in the narrative the leader of the rebellion, Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, is constantly ridiculed. The whole story is given in an artificially grotesque tone; the "curt" style proves to be a ready medium for vituperation:

The Lion had no sooner made his exitt, but the ape (by indubitable right) steps upon the stage. Bacon was no sooner removed by the hand of good providence, but another steps in, by the wheele of fickle fortune. The Countrey had, for som time, bin guided by a company of knaves, now it was to try how it would behave it selfe under a foole.73

The loose asymmetrical periods are more frequent; they too abound in puns, repetitions, hyperboles, quibbles and other mannerisms of the advanced Baroque. One example must suffice:

But he at present, seeing there was no more to be don, since he wanted a power to haue that don, which was esteemed the maine of the affaires, now in hand to be don, namely the gaineing of the Gloster men, to do what he would haue don, he thought it not amiss to do what he had a power to do, and that was once more to proclame Bacon a Tratour, which was performed in all publick places of meeting in these parts.74

These papers might well compete in grotesqueness with "The Simple Cobbler"; but in the former the "loose" style predominates, while in the latter the "curt" style is the most characteristic.

VII. COTTON MATHER (1663-1728).

That Cotton Mather's is the most affected style ever written in America, is a commonplace of American literary history. Profesor Tyler finds in his writing the "expulsion of the beautiful from thought, from sentiment, from language; a lawless and merciless fury for the odd, the disorderly, the grotesque, the violent; strained analogies, freaks of allusion, monstrosities of phrase."75 In other words, the last development of English literary Baroque may be studied in Cotton Mather.

Instances could be given from the gigantic volume of his Ecclesiastical History of New England (called Magnalia Christi Americana76 or from almost any of his 350 odd works.77 The very typographical aspect of his pages aims at surprising with their frequent capitals and italics.

What the Scorner more Particularly bestows his Flouts upon, is Dr. Mather's PREACHING. Strange! His PREACHING! Of all things,... His PREACHING! 79

Mather's quaintness was intentional. He belonged to a new generation of Americans who did not confine their interest to religious and moral questions only. He was possessed of an insatiable thirst for knowledge, prided himself upon being a scientist and sent communications to the Royal Society in London. As a collector of curious facts and stories he was a belated follower of Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne and Joseph Glanvil both in matter and style, without possessing the force and genius of at least the first two.

To the end of his life he cultivated and defendedso his cumbrous style. It is strange to find in the 18th century, among endless "loose" periods, such "curt" sentences inserted as might have been written a hundred years previously:

Never doubt; Suffering will come on fast enough: Satan is not asleep: his children and factors, everywhere, as of Old, Fill the Country.81

Thomas Prince preaching the sermon on the death of Cotton Mather, stated: "In his style he was something singular and not so agreeable to the gust of the age",82

At the time of Mather's death American authors were already endeavouring to write in the classicist 18th century style; imitations of Pope's poetry were appearing in America.

NOTES.

1 Cf. Benedetto Croce, Storia dell' età barocca in Italia (Bari, 1919), Introduction.

2 General works having some relation to the problem of the Baroque in literature:

Karl Borinski, Die Antike in Poetik etc. (Leipzig, 1914 and 1924). A. Hübscher, Barock als Gestaltung antithetischen Lebensgefühls, Euphorion, XXIII (1922/23), pp. 517 seq., 759 seq.

O. Walzel, Gehalt und Gestalt etc. (Berlin-Neubabelsberg, 1923). H. Wölfflin, Renaissance und Barock (München, 1888). Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (München, 1915).

W. Weisbach, Der Barock als Kunst der Gegenreformation (Berlin 1921).

3 H. Cysarz, Deutsche Barockdichtung (Leipzig, 1924).

E. Ermatinger, Barock und Rokoko in der deutschen Dichtung (Leipzig, 1926).

G. Müller, Deutsche Dichtung von der Renaissance bis zum Ausgang des Barock (Wildpark-Potsdam, 1927).

H. Pliester, Die Worthäufung im Barock (Bonn, 1930).

F. Strich, Der lyrische Stil des XVII. Jahrhunderts, Abhandlungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte, Franz Muncker... dargebracht, pp. 21 53 (München, 1916).

K. Viëtor, Probleme der deutschen Barockliteratur (Leipzig, 1928). W. Weisbach, Barock als Stilphenomenon, Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift für Literaturwissenschaft etc. II (1924), pp. 225 seq.

(The list is by no means complete.)

4 F. Pützer, Prediger des englischen Barock stylistisch untersucht (Bonn, 1929).

W. Michels, Barockstil bei Shakespeare und Calderon, Revue hispanique 75: 167: 370 458 (Paris, 1929).

O. Walzel, Shakespeares dramatische Baukunst, Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, LII (1916), pp. 31—35.

5 H. Hatzfeld, Der Barockstil der religiösen Lyrik in Frankreich, Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft, IV (1929),

pp. 30-60.

F. Schürr, Barock, Klassicismus und Rokoko in der französischen Literatur (Leipzig, 1928).

L. Spitzer, Die Wortbildung als stilistisches Mittel etc. (Halle, 1910). Die klassische Dämpfung in Racines Stil, Archivum Romanicum XII (1928), pp. 361-472.

6 In an article on Euphuism and Baroque Prose, časopis pro moderní filologii, 18 : 314 : 291-296 (Praha, 1932), I have endeavoured to show that Euphism could not be considered a Baroque phenomenon. 7 Michels, op. cit. (in note 4), p. 398.

8 Cf. J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol. II. The moral and didactic earnestness of the northern humanists is well-known, but it was often a legacy of the Middle Ages or expression of the Reformation spirit.