Elizabethans, but his manner is his own. It cannot be characterized or imitated.

(c) By Bibliophile Society. Reproduced by special permission.

CHARLES LAMB AND ROAST PIG

Lamb wrote an Essay upon Roast Pig. As one looks at this, one can see the delicious playfulness of the essay taking shape in his mind.

The following gives some idea of his style. Observe how very human, offhand, and conversational he dares to be. He writes as a good talker would talk in a group of friends.

I never in my life and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of it saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play, or snuff a candle in the middle of a game, or ring for a servant till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last century countenance, it was at the act of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty.persuaded to take a hand, and who, in his excess of candor, declared that he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreation of the kind. She could not bear to have her noble occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, considered in this light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world to do, and she did it. She unbent her mind afterward, over a book.

This shows, it must be remembered, only one side of Lamb's work. One finds in his Essays passages of delicate fancy, of playful humor, of tender pathos. The style fits the subject-now humorous, now poetical, always characteristically his own.

Another of the same group is Leigh Hunt (1784-1859). He wrote upon all sorts of subjects, some very light. He is one of the first to ex

a familiar offhand style that his poetic taste kept somewhat in check. Hunt was at heart a poet with the tastes but none of the genius of Keats, whom he to some extent influenced,, not always for the better and whom he devotedly loved. Of all his poetry only a few lines live, light lines that he wrote about his meeting, in his old age, with Mrs. Carlyle, the lines ending "Jenny kissed me." His prose is still good reading, and might be of help to those students of composition who can find "nothing more to say about the subject." Hunt's quick imagination never suffered for a lack of interesting thoughts about any topic that presented itself.

LEIGH HUNT

A man as contradictory as his face, poet, essayist, and intimate friend of men of genius.

Only his essays live.

One more writer, a solitary figure, is Walter Savage

Landor

Landor. We can see in him very clearly the return to the spirit of the ancients, the attempt to make the days of. Athens live and breathe. Unfortunately, like other imitators of the classics, Landor imitated their calmness only too well. He failed to bring out the glowing life beneath. His Imaginary Conversations deal only in part with ancient days, but all are filled with classical restraint. Landor was a man of violent temper and extravagant expression; only in his writing could he hold himself under control. Here he succeeded too well. A high-school student would care little for his conversations except for the few in which the concealed fire breaks out upon the surface. Landor also wrote considerable verse of merit. The only poem of his that has touched the popular fancy is the following, in which there is almost perfect mingling of romantic feeling and classical restraint.

Ah! what avails the sceptered race!

Ah! what the form divine!

What every virtue, every grace!

Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes

May weep, but never see,

A night of memories and sighs

I consecrate to thee.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

I. Explain the reasons for the development of poetical prose. What new needs for it in fiction, criticism, and history?

Who was Hazlitt. For what would you turn to his works?

For what is DeQuincy famous? Read his Dream-Fugue (following The English Mail Coach) and observe its rhythmic and poetic character.

II. What is a humorist in the modern meaning?

Give the history

Select

of the word.
Show that Charles Lamb deserves the name of humorist.

one of his essays that appeals to you. Tell in what respect it
is humorous.

For what is Landor noted? Read one of his Imaginary Conversations and decide why you like or dislike it.

CHAPTER VI

MACAULAY

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859) was born not much later than De Quincey and Leigh Hunt and died in the

His Place

same year. Yet,

though writing at the same time, he belongs to a later period. In some respects he is of our own day. Politically he is a leader, seeing clearly the principles of democracy. As a writer of prose, he was one of the first to attain a light, clean-cut structure. But in his opinions about poetry he was, though he could write stirring poetry himself, ignorant of the tendencies amid which he lived.

THOMAS B. MACAULAY Orator, essayist, historian, poet, one of the most brilliant and versatile men of his day.

Macaulay wrote history, essays, and verse. His History of England was the first to trace the steady evolution

of popular government.
and a brilliant speaker in Parliament, he was His Work

A member of the liberal party

well fitted to look back over the road that

English liberalism had traveled. His history has its limitations, but the Englishmen who read it saw a new meaning in their nation's story. Everybody who read anything read it. It was history that rivalled fiction.

Macaulay's style has one great merit. Whatever he wrote is perfectly clear. He attained this clearness by modern methods. Of all the "standard" His Clearwriters required for college entrance, he is ness the only one before the middle of the century who is a good model for a writer of to-day. His style is clear because his thought is clear. Thought is not naturally clear. Ideas come into our minds entangled, intermixed, out of order. And too many writers set them down just as they come. Macaulay arranged and cleared up his thoughts before he wrote. Apparently he trained himself to see at once, in one clear act of his mind, all that he had to say, in all its relations, and he enabled his reader to see it as he did. He knew when he wrote a sentence or a paragraph just what relation it had to his whole plan, and he made this relation plain.

tences and Paragraphs

His sentences are shorter, on the average, than those of the writers before his day, and they are more varied in length. He will follow a series of long sen- His Sentences by one short sentence that sums up the point. He had learned, too, to put the point of a sentence last. He will begin paragraphs with topic sentences and will end them with summaries. He makes easy transitions, passing smoothly from thought to thought. He lets his readers see where he is going.