rts, to abandon
form and style is inevitably destructive and entails misfortunes which
can hardly be estimated, for loose, weak and vulgar writing is a sure
precursor of loose, weak and vulgar thinking. If form of expression is
cast aside, form in thought and in the presentation of thought is
certain to follow. Against all this the fine English prose amply
represented in these selections offers a silent and convincing protest
to every one who will read it attentively.

We can begin with the splendid prose of the age of Elizabeth and of
the seventeenth century. It is irregular and untamed, but exuberant
and brilliant, rich both in texture and substance. We find it at its
height in the strange beauties of Sir Thomas Browne, in the noble
pages of Milton, stiff with golden embroidery, as Macaulay says, and
in the touching and beautiful simplicity of Bunyan's childlike
sentences. Thence we pass to the eighteenth century, when English
prose was freed from its involutions and irregularities and brought to
uniformity and to a standard. The age of Anne gave to English prose
balance, precision and settled form. There have been periods of
greater originality, but the eighteenth century at least lived up to
Pope's doctrine, set forth in the familiar line:

"What oft was thought but ne'er so well exprest."

As there is no better period to turn to for instruction than the age
of Anne, so, if we must choose a single writer there is no better
master to be studied than Swift. There have been many great writers
and many fine and beautiful styles since the days of the terrible Dean
of St. Patrick's, from the imposing and finely balanced sentences of
Gibbon to the subtle delicacy of Hawthorne and the careful finish of
Robert Louis Stevenson. But in Swift better than in any one writer can
we find the lessons which are so sorely needed now. He had in the
highest degree force, clearness and concentration all combined with a
marvelous simplicity. Swift's style may have lacked richness, but it
never failed in taste. There is not a line of false fine-writing in
all his books. Those are the qualities which are so needed now,
simplicity and clearness and a scrupulous avoidance of that would-be
fine writing which is not at all fine but merely vulgar and insincere.

The writing in our newspapers is where reform is particularly needed.
There are great journals here and there which maintain throughout a
careful standard of good and sober Engli