The ancient and universal restraints were swept away,
the decorous stateliness of all the buried centuries was abandoned, and
there arose a band of writers, to whom De Quincey and Ruskin were
the leaders, who withdrew all veils from their emotions, threw away all
the shackles of reserve, and poured their sobs and ecstasies upon us,
in soaring periods of impassioned prose, glittering with decorative
alliterations, and adorned with euphonious harmonies of vowel sounds.
This flamboyant style seems to have synchronised with the general
decline of reserve and ceremony in English life, and with the rise of the
modern familiar intimacy that leaves no privacy even to our thoughts.
Our grandfathers would have hesitated to have discussed at the
dinner-table, even after the ladies had withdrawn, what is now set
down for free debate at ladies' clubs, and canvassed in the correct
columns of the _Guardian_.
This new habit of mind and speech has affected our literature deeply
and diversely. In the hands of the really great masters such as Carlyle,
Froude, and Ruskin, the intimate revelations of the throbbings of their
hearts, and the direct and untrammelled appeal of their inmost souls
crying in the market-place, take forcible possession of our affections,
and bring them into closer touch with each one of us than was ever
possible with the older restrained writers.
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