Classic Essays On English Prose Style

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12 Classic Essays on English Prose Style

Key Passages From the Writings of Master Stylists
by Richard Nordquist
Updated March 20, 2017
Despite the changes in English prose over the past few centuries, we may still benefit from the
stylistic observations of the old masters. Here, chronologically arranged, are 12 key passages
from our collection of Classic Essays on English Prose Style. (To read the complete essays, click
on the highlighted titles.)
Samuel Johnson on the Bugbear Style

There is a mode of style for which I know not that the masters of oratory have yet
found a name; a style by which the most evident truths are so obscured, that they
can no longer be perceived, and the most familiar propositions so disguised that they
cannot be known. . . . This style may be called the terrifick, for its chief intention is, to
terrify and amaze; it may be termed the repulsive, for its natural effect is to drive
away the reader; or it may be distinguished, in plain English, by the denomination of
the bugbear style, for it has more terror than danger.(Samuel Johnson, "On the
Bugbear Style," 1758)
Oliver Goldsmith on Simple Eloquence
Eloquence is not in the words but in the subject, and in great concerns the more
simply anything is expressed, it is generally the more sublime. True eloquence does
not consist, as the rhetoricians assure us, in saying great things in a sublime style,
but in a simple style, for there is, properly speaking, no such thing as a sublime style;
the sublimity lies only in the things; and when they are not so, the language may be
turgid, affected, metaphorical--but not affecting.
(Oliver Goldsmith, "Of Eloquence," 1759)
Benjamin Franklin on Imitating the Style of the Spectator

About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. I had never before seen
any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I
thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With that view, I
took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence,
laid them by for a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete
the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length and as fully as it
had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand.
(Benjamin Franklin, "Imitating the Style of the Spectator," 1789)
William Hazlitt on Familiar Style

It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar
style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the
contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of
expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning
pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not
to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use.
(William Hazlitt, "On Familiar Style," 1822)
Thomas Macaulay on the Bombastic Style

[Michael Sadler's style is] everything which it ought not to be. Instead of saying what
he has to say with the perspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists
the eloquence proper to scientific writing, he indulges without measure in vague,
bombastic declamation, made up of those fine things which boys of fifteen admire,
and which everybody, who is not destined to be a boy all his life, weeds vigorously
out of his compositions after five-and-twenty. That portion of his two thick volumes
which is not made up of statistical tables, consists principally of ejaculations,
apostrophes, metaphors, similes--all the worst of their respective kinds.
(Thomas Babington Macaulay, "On Sadler's Bombastic Declamations," 1831)
Henry Thoreau on a Vigorous Prose Style

The scholar might frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis of the farmer's call
to his team, and confess that if that were written it would surpass his labored
sentences. Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy
periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description
of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our
tone and spirits. A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plow instead
of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.
(Henry David Thoreau, "A Vigorous Prose Style," 1849)
Cardinal John Newman on the Inseparability of Style and Substance

Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are
parts of one; style is a thinking out into language. This is what I have been laying
down, and this is literature: not things, not the verbal symbols of things; not on the
other hand mere words; but thoughts expressed in language. . . . A great author,
Gentlemen, is not one who merely has a copia verborum, whether in prose or verse,
and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling
sentences; but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it.(John
Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 1852)
Mark Twain on Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he
will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not
the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and
sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he
does not say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied
with the approximate words. . . . There have been daring people in the world who
claimed that Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.
(Mark Twain, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences," 1895)
Agnes Repplier on the Right Words

Musicians know the value of chords; painters know the value of colors; writers are
often so blind to the value of words that they are content with a bare expression of
their thoughts . . .. For every sentence that may be penned or spoken the right words
exist. They lie concealed in the inexhaustible wealth of a vocabulary enriched by
centuries of noble thought and delicate manipulation. He who does not find them and
fit them into place, who accepts the first term which presents itself rather than search
for the expression which accurately and beautifully embodies his meaning, aspires to
mediocrity, and is content with failure.(Agnes Repplier, "Words," 1896)
Arthur Quiller-Couch on Extraneous Ornament

[L]et me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which
have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it.
Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament. . . . [I]f you here
require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: "Whenever you feel an
impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—wholeheartedly—
and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings."
(Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "On Style," 1916)
H.L. Mencken on Woodrow Wilson's Style

Woodrow knew how to conjure up such words. He knew how to make them glow,
and weep. He wasted no time upon the heads of his dupes, but aimed directly at
their ears, diaphragms and hearts. . . . When Wilson got upon his legs in those days
he seems to have gone into a sort of trance, with all the peculiar illusions and
delusions that belong to a frenzied pedagogue. He heard words giving three cheers;
he saw them race across a blackboard like Socialists pursued by the Polizei; he felt
them rush up and kiss him.(H.L. Mencken, "The Style of Woodrow," 1921)
F.L. Lucas on Stylistic Honesty
As the police put it, anything you say may be used as evidence against you. If
handwriting reveals character, writing reveals it still more. . . . Most style is not
honest enough. Easy to say, but hard to practice. A writer may take to long words, as
young men to beards—to impress. But long words, like long beards, are often the
badge of charlatans. Or a writer may cultivate the obscure, to seem profound. But
even carefully muddied puddles are soon fathomed. Or he may cultivate eccentricity,
to seem original. But really original people do not have to think about being original—
they can no more help it than they can help breathing. They do not need to dye their
hair green.
(F.L. Lucas, "10 Principles of Effective Style," 1955)
For the complete collection, visit Classic Essays on English Prose Style.

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Home

12 Classic Essays on English Prose Style

Samuel Johnson on the Bugbear Style

Benjamin Franklin on Imitating the Style of the Spectator

William Hazlitt on Familiar Style

Thomas Macaulay on the Bombastic Style

Henry Thoreau on a Vigorous Prose Style

Cardinal John Newman on the Inseparability of Style and Substance

Agnes Repplier on the Right Words

Arthur Quiller-Couch on Extraneous Ornament

H.L. Mencken on Woodrow Wilson's Style

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