EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PROSE

THE FIRST HALF OF THE 18TH CENTURY 

The 18 th Century was doubtlessly an age of great prose. Matthew Arnold calls it a century
of prose and suggests that even the poetry of the period was prosaic or versified prose. The
period has only one great poet Alexander Pope while it produced prose writers of very high
quality like Addison, Steele, Swift, Defoe and Johnson.

Daniel Defoe (1659-1731) was a journalist and pamphleteer who wrote with extra ordinary
felicity and effect on an infinite variety of subjects. His prose work is in amazing bulk and variety.
Like most of the prose writers of the period Defoe turned out a mass of political tracts and
pamphlets. He issued his own journal The Review in 1704 which was in several ways the
forerunner of The Tatler and The Spectator. His best known work was The True Born
Englishman (1701). His The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702) invited official wrath.
His novels like Robinson Crusoe were landmarks in the growth of prose. His prose is noted for
extraordinary minute realism and colloquial style.

The most important contribution in 18 th century prose has been made by Richard Steele
(1672-1729) and Joseph Addison (1672-1719) through their well known periodicals The
Tatler and The Spectator. Temperamentally Richard Steele was a moralist but he had none of
the cynicism which had characterised the century. He wrote dramas but it was due to his essays
that he finds his place in literature. He had variation and sentimental aspiration and a form of
sincere piety as proved by his first book The Christian Hero. His lesson is that conduct should
be regulated not by the desire for glory but by conscience. He started his journal The Tatler in
1709, The Spectator in 1711 and several other short lived periodicals The
Guardian (1713),The Englishman (1713), The Reader (1714), and The Plebeian (1719).
Steele is remarkable for his witty prose and humorous style. His characters are also humorous.

Steele’s alliance with Addison was so close and so constant that a comparison between

them is almost inevitable. Some critics maintain that of the two Steele is worthier. He is equal
to Addisonin versatility and originality. His humour is broader and less restrained
than Addison’s, with a naïve pathetic touch that is reminiscent of Goldsmith. His pathos is more
attractive and more humane. But Steele’s very virtues are only his weaknesses sublimed; they
are emotional, not intellectual; of the heart, and not of the head. He is incapable of irony; he
lacks penetration and power. He lacks Addison’s care and suave ironic insight. He is reckless in
style and inconsequent in method.

The aim of Steele’s essays was didactic; he desired to bring about a reformation of
contemporary society manners, and is notable for his consistent advocacy of womanly virtues
and the ideal of the gentleman of courtesy, chivalry, and good taste. His essays on children are
charming, and are full of human sympathy.
Joseph Addison was famous for drama, poetry and essays. But it is in fact almost entirely as an
essayist that he is justly famed. Together with Steele he protected the periodical essay in The
Tatler and The Spectator. The first object of Addison and Steele was to present a true and
faithful picture of the 18th century. The next object was to bring about a moral and social reform
in the conditions of the time. The best of his essays are centred round the imaginary character
of Sir Roger de Coverley and hence known as Coverley Papers.

Addison wrote four hundred essays in all, which are of almost uniform length, of nearly
unvarying excellence of style and of a wide variety of subject. Most of his compositions deal with
topical subjects ----- fashions, head dresses, practical jokes, polite conversation. Deeper themes
were handled in a popular fashion---- immorality, jealousy, prayer, death and drunkenness. He
touched politics only gingerly. He advocated moderation and tolerance and was the enemy of
enthusiasm. Sometimes he adopted allegory as a means of throwing his ideas vividly to the
readers and hence we haveThe Vision of Mirza and the political allegory Public Credit.

Addison’s humour is of a rare order. It is delicately ironical, gentlemanly, tolerant and

urbane. His style has often been deservedly praised. It is the pattern of the middle style, never
slipshod, or obscure, or unmelodious. He has an infallible instinct for proper word and subdued
rhythm. In this fashion his prose moves with a demure and pleasing grace, in harmony with his
subject, with his object, and with himself.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was another writer who made new experiments in prose
writings. His Gulliver’s Travels, The Tale of a Tub and The Battle of Books are powerful
satires written in prose. His Journal to Stella is a long narrative in which political situation is
reported when he was in London. He is the greatest satirist and unlike Pope he restricts himself
to general rather than personal attacks. His work has a cosmic, elemental force, which is
irresistible and almost frightening. His dissection of humanity shows a powerful mind relentlessly
and fearlessly probing into follies and hypocrisy, but he is never merely destructive. His work
has the desire for the greater use of commonsense and reason in the ordering of human affairs.

In addition to these, other prose writers of the period were John Arbuthnot (1667-1735),
Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751), George Berkeley (1685-1753), and Earl of Shaftsbury (1671-
1713). The writings of Arbuthnot were chiefly political and includes the Memoirs of Martinus
Scriblerus, The History of John Bull and The Art of Political Lying. Bolingbroke prided
himself on being both a patron of letters and a man of letters. His Letter to Sir William
Wyndham, A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism and The Idea of a Patriot King reflect the Tory
sentiments and are written with lucidity, vigour and rhetoric.Berkeley was a man of great and
enterprising mind and wrote with much charm on a diversity of scientific, philosophical and
metaphysical subjects. Among his books are The Principles of Human Knowledge, Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous and Alciphron,or The Minute Philosopher. He is
among the first of the English Philosophers who have dressed their ideas in a language of
literary distinction. The books of Shaftesbury are written with great care and exactitude and are
pleasant and lucid. His book Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times suited
the taste of the time.

The prose of first half of the 18 th century made a distinct advance. Periodical literature
occupied a prominent place. Defoe’s Review (1704), Steele’s The Tatler (1709) and The
Spectator(1711) and The Plebeian (1719) are some prominent periodicals of this time. With the
advancement of periodical press the short essay takes a great stride forward. The works of
Addison and Steele has already been mentioned. Other essayists of the time were Swift and
Pope who contributed to the periodicals. Allegorical prose narratives were another feature of the
time for example Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Addison’s The Vision of Mirza. There is also a
large body of religious, political, and philosophical work. Much of it is satirical. In political prose
Swift is the most outstanding.

The most outstanding feature of the prose of this era is the development of middle style
of which one of the chief exponents was Addison. We now find an established prose style that
may fit into any miscellaneous purposes---- newspaper, political works, essay, historical writings
and biographies. The plainer style was practised by Swift and Defoe. With these two in vogue
the ornate style disappeared and re-emerged with Johnson and Gibbon in the second half of the
century.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE 18TH CENTURY

During this period we find the development of prose in the hands of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith,
Gibbon and Burke.

Samuel Johnson (1709-84) is a first rate writer of prose. His early works appeared
in The Gentleman’s Magazine during 1738 and 1744. For the said periodical he wrote imaginary
parliamentary debates embellished in his own vigorous style. In 1747 he began working on his
Dictionary which was his great contribution to scholarship. While working on the Dictionary he
also wrote periodical essays for The Rambler. In these essays we find the mannerisms which
are evident of his trenchant force and vigour. He wrote RASSELAS (1759) which was meant to
be a philosophical novel but it was actually a number of Rambler essays strung together. During
1758-60 he contributed papers for The Idler, The Universal Chronicle and Weekly Gazette.
These essays were lighter and shorter than those of Rambler. In 1765 he published his truly
great work---- his edition of Shakespeare for which he wrote a fine preface, a landmark in
Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. His travel book titled A Journey to the Western
Islands of Scotland (1775) shows the faculty of narrative. His last work and a substantial work
was The Lives of the Poets (1777-81), planned as a series of introduction to the works and
lives of fifty two poets. The book is regarded as a fine piece of literary criticism. Johnson’s prose
style has often been criticised as pompous, artificial and verbose. However it only reflects one
aspect of his writing. In his early works, notably in The Rambler, and in Rasselas, the prose is
heavy, rhetorical, and full of affectation and highly Latinised. These early mannerisms disappear
in his later writings. In The Lives of Poets his prose has ease, lucidity, force and vigorous
directness of conversation.

The prose of Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74) is of astonishing range and volume. His  The
Citizen of the World (1759) is a series of imaginary letters from a china man whose comments
on the English society are both simple and shrewd. He wrote many essays in the manner
of Addisonand also produced a great mass of hack work most of which is worthless as historical
and scientific fact but is enlightened with the grace of his style. Some of these works are  An
Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759), The History of
England (1771) and A History of Earth and Animated Nature.

Edward Gibbon (1737-94) was an eager reader of history from his early years. His private
historical studies led him to become a Roman Catholic when he was sixteen which resulted in
his expulsion from Oxford. His father sent him to Lausanne, Switzerland in the hope that the
Protestant atmosphere there would divert him from his new faith. There, at Lausanne, Gibbon
got acquainted with the French language and learning. His first book A History of Switzerland
(1770) was never finished. In 1776 he published the first volume of The Decline and fall of the
Roman Empire. Five other volumes of the same book were published at two years interval.
This book has been regarded as one of the greatest historical works. His prose style is peculiar
to himself. It is lordly and commanding with a majestic rhythm. Admirably appropriate to its
gigantic subject, the style has some weaknesses. Though it never flags and rarely stumbles but
the very perfection of it tends to monotony as it lacks ease and variety.

Edmund Burke (1729-97) shares with Gibbon the place of the great prose stylist of the
age. The works of Burke can be divided into two groups: his purely philosophical writings and
his political pamphlets and speeches. His philosophical writings were composed in the earlier
part of his career. A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) is a parody of the style and ideas of
Bolingbroke. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful (1756) is his most philosophical book. His political works are his most substantial
claim to fame. In variety, breadth of view and illuminating power of vision they are unsurpassed
in the language. They fall into two categories: speeches and pamphlets. It is in his speeches
that Burke’s artistry and power is at its best. The greatest of them are his speeches on
American Taxation, on Conciliation with the Colonies and on the Impeachment of Warren
Hastings. Of his best known pamphlets, the first to be produced was Thoughts on the Cause
of the Present Discontents (1770), which shows all his peculiar qualities and methods.
Between 1790 and 1797 he published a number of pamphlets, of which Reflection on the
Revolution in France, A Letter to a Noble Lord and Letters on a Regicide Peace are the
most noteworthy. Though the occasion of Burke’s political writings has vanished, the books can
still be read with profit and pleasure. Burke was the practical politician who applied a light and
clear and forcible intelligence to the problems of his days. He could distil from the muddy liquid
of contemporary party strife the clear wine of wisdom and so deduce ideas of unshakeable
permanence. In addition, we have the attraction of Burke’s style. Dignified and graceful, it is the
most powerful prose of the times. It is marked by all oratorial devices---- repetition, careful
arrangement and balance of parts, copious use of rhetorical figures, and variation of sentence
structure, homely illustrations and a swift vigorous rhythm. It is full of colour and splendour and
is fired by impassioned imagination.

The prose of this period has many men and many manners. The simplest prose of this
period is found mainly in the works of the novelists. The excellent middle style of Addison
survived in the works of Goldsmith and in the later works of Johnson. The ornate class of prose
was represented by the Rambler essays of Johnson and the writings of Gibbon and Burke. A
fresh and highly interesting style was the poetic prose of Macpherson’s Ossian. This style was
not ornate as it was drawn from the simplest elements. It possessed a solemnity of expression,
and so decided a rhythm and cadence, that the effect is almost lyrical.