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£ s. d. 39 prose-writers in 60 volumes, costing 5 1 0 18 poets " 18 " " 1 7 0 57 78 £6 8 0 The catalogue of necessary authors of this third and last period being so long, it is convenient to divide the prose writers into Imaginative and Non-imaginative. In the latter half of the period the question of copyright affects our scheme to a certain extent, because it affects prices.
And it is fortunate for us that in Paris, and in the straitest literary sect there, his method began to form itself, and the art of prose fiction became to him a religion. In that art he finds as much inspiration as Swinburne found in the art of poetry. Just as Swinburne was the most learned of our poets, so is Mr. James the most learned of our let us say 'our' prose-writers.
Ariosto, one of the few names, ancient or modern, who is allowed on all hands to occupy the first rank of Literature, is, I suppose, rightly arraigned by the author I have above quoted, of “coarse sensuality.” Pulci, “by his sceptical insinuations, seems clearly to display an intention of exposing religion to contempt.” Boccaccio, the first of Italian prose-writers, had in his old age touchingly to lament the corrupting tendency of his popular compositions; and Bellarmine has to vindicate him, Dante, and Petrarch, from the charge of virulent abuse of the Holy See.
And it is all couched in clear, flowing, rather loosely jointed English, carefully avoiding rhetoric and eloquence and striving always to reproduce the ease and flow of cultured conversation, rather than the tighter, more closely knit style of consciously "literary" prose. His methods were the methods of the four great prose-writers who followed him Defoe, Addison, Steele, and Swift.
Many of our prose-writers constantly put language upon paper the use of which in ordinary life would be received by a court as evidence of insanity. If they do so for display, they take the readiest course to defeat their purpose. There is nothing so fascinating as simplicity and earnestness. A writer who has an object, and goes right on to accomplish it, will compel the attention of his readers.
In his own art, the art of design, whether this assumed the form of sculpture or of painting or of architecture, he did nothing except at the highest pressure. All his accomplished work shows signs of the intensest cerebration. But he tried at times to slumber, sunk in a wise passiveness. Then he communed with the poets, the prophets, and the prose-writers of his country.
Besides, I do not know that dulness is strength, or that an observation is slight because it is striking. Mediocrity, insipidity, want of character is the great fault. Mediocribus esse poetis Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnae. Neither is this privilege allowed to prose-writers in our time any more than to poets formerly.
I have included FitzGerald because *Omar Khayyám* is much less a translation than an original work. 83 prose-writers, in 141 volumes, costing £ 9 10 7 38 poets " 46 " " 5 7 0 121 187 £14 17 7 Authors. Price. 1. To Dryden 48 72 £ 5 9 0 2. Eighteenth Century 57 78 6 8 0 3. Nineteenth Century 121 187 £14 17 7 I think it will be agreed that the total cost of this library is surprisingly small.
It was 1865, when all the great French writers, themselves of but some thirty years' standing, were dying off, not to be succeeded! 1865, when for seventy years England had not lacked, and for nearly thirty more was not to lack, poets and prose-writers of the first order by the dozen and almost the score!
Still, it was a commendable effort in the boy to try to improve his mind. Some of the best poets who have lived wrote mere doggerel when they began. Many of our best prose-writers, too, were exceedingly faulty writers at first. It is a noble effort of a boy to try to put his thoughts into writing.
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