MR. GOSSE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
[To TER EDITOR OF TEl "SPECTATOR:"] Srn,—Yon have reviewed my "Short History of English Literature" in the Spectator of January 29th with so charm! ing a courtesy, and with an appreciation so generous, that I feel it to be almost indelicate on my part to refer to your few objections, so kindly put. But I will have the effrontery to contend with you on two points, if I may. The question of Milton's status at the Restoration is one of real historic interest. It has startled your reviewer that I should say that his "influence on the age he lived in was nil, and that to unprejudiced persons of education living in London about 1665 the author of Paradise Lost' was something less than Flecknoe or Flatman." You suggest that 1665 is "probably a slip for 1(167 ; " but, although I confess the date may be over-subtle, it was not a slip. In 1665 there is every reason to believe that "Paradise Lost" had been completed for at least a year. It was not published, precisely because, as I oontend, Milton was, not an influence, and had no public. The poems of Flatman were extremely admired, and ran through many consecutive editions, while the glorious lyrics of Milton were reprinted but once between 1645 and the end of the century.. There is every reason to believe that this solitary reprint of 1673 met with no encouragement at all from the public. Purposely (but perhaps, as I have said, too 8ub41y) I chose the date 1665, because at that time Milton was already the author of the noblest poetry in our language and of a multitude of-,profte works, and was nearly sixty years of age ; yet in -that reformation of English literature on Gallioo - clap* ilines which I date from 1665, and of which atu_speaking in the passage you dissent from, he wm,oS,upform or moment whatsoever. You mention Marvell, but even if Marvell had been an "unprejudiced person," the curious fact is that by the year 1665 he had entirely thrown in his lot with the classic writers, and was composing verse to which the influence of- Milton and of romanticism generally was absolutely adverse. I cannot think "The Character of Holland" or "Last Instructions to a Painter" happily chosen as examples of the Miltonio manner. If your reviewer can show me a single proof that Milton, in the first decade after the Restoration, exercised the minutest influence on style in -verse or prose, I will heartily confess my error. But my phrase was not "a slip," and I .must be convicted before I can be penitent. The other point I venture to speak of is the use of certain words. I admit, with yon, that " orotund," is barbarous and horrid ; I will never use it again. But when did it creep into the language P I have met with it so early as 1799. It was rather common in the Early Victorian period. It was too much a favourite with my father, whose merits as a writer it would (I confess) be more becoming in me to imitate than this eccentricity. But who invented "orotund," and why was he allowed to live? And .what do you suggest as the exact equivalent of this useful monster?
You forbid me to use "styptic" as an adjective applied to style. Probably you are right. But in using the word I had before-me the idea of astringency, of the action of that which contracts or staunches. Disraeli, on a famous occa- sion, spoke of "a jewelled hmmorrhage of words." I con- ceived that it was Newman's function to constrict such floods of verbiage. He found English prose gashed with the knives of De Quincey, Carlyle, and Macaulay. As Pope says■
" The wound he washed, the styptic juice infus'd."
I am afraid you will say that this is not merely fantastic, but even, volatile. But I should be very sorry that you should think me capable of using words in mere wantonness. If, however, the adjective presented a difficulty to so kind and so intelligent a reviewer, I cannot defend it seriously. It is self-
29 Delamere Terrace, W., January 29th.
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