scriptorial

Updated: May 28, 2025

Pater in deliberate and successful architecture of the prose-paragraph in what may, for the sake of a necessary difference, be called the scriptorial in opposition to the oratorical manner. He may fall short of the poetic grandeur of Sir Thomas Browne, of the phantasmagoric charm of De Quincey at his rare best, of the gorgeous panoramas of Mr. Ruskin.

George Saintsbury - A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)