DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.50017#0029
INTRODUCTION xxiii
Phcmme, describes it as negligent and infected by
foreign idioms, but agreeable and interesting ; not like
the perusal of a book, but conversation with a com-
panion. Johnson hailed him as the first writer who
gave cadence to English prose and paid him the flattery
of imitation, as he did Sir Thomas Browne, with
perhaps even greater fidelity. One has but to com-
pare Temple’s steady current, deserving Clarendon’s
favourite epithet “ flowing,” with the comparatively
uneven and rugged periods of John Evelyn, or even
Clarendon himself, to feel the justice of Johnson’s
judgment; but the Doctor was perhaps a semi-tone
too dogmatic, and might have included Dryden among
the first of the prose prophets.
Swift dwells upon Temple’s remarkable power of
adapting the style of his letters to the character of his
correspondent, and declares that he advanced our Eng-
lish tongue to as great perfection as it can well bear.
Hallam thinks that he has less eloquence than Boling-
broke, but is free from his restlessness and ostentation.
Macaulay, with much condescension and generosity,
for he confesses frankly that he does not like Temple’s
character—and Style, says a greater historian than
Macaulay, is the image of character—pronounces his
prose to be singularly lucid and melodious, superficially
Phcmme, describes it as negligent and infected by
foreign idioms, but agreeable and interesting ; not like
the perusal of a book, but conversation with a com-
panion. Johnson hailed him as the first writer who
gave cadence to English prose and paid him the flattery
of imitation, as he did Sir Thomas Browne, with
perhaps even greater fidelity. One has but to com-
pare Temple’s steady current, deserving Clarendon’s
favourite epithet “ flowing,” with the comparatively
uneven and rugged periods of John Evelyn, or even
Clarendon himself, to feel the justice of Johnson’s
judgment; but the Doctor was perhaps a semi-tone
too dogmatic, and might have included Dryden among
the first of the prose prophets.
Swift dwells upon Temple’s remarkable power of
adapting the style of his letters to the character of his
correspondent, and declares that he advanced our Eng-
lish tongue to as great perfection as it can well bear.
Hallam thinks that he has less eloquence than Boling-
broke, but is free from his restlessness and ostentation.
Macaulay, with much condescension and generosity,
for he confesses frankly that he does not like Temple’s
character—and Style, says a greater historian than
Macaulay, is the image of character—pronounces his
prose to be singularly lucid and melodious, superficially