Macaulay, Lincoln, Ruskin, de Quincey, Browne, and Emerson are the greatest prose artists in the English language...

ye w/e dude, just wanted to say that George is a God
kkthxbb

William Gass

The student surpasses the master

I've been posting a similar list, but minus Ruskin and with the additions of James Branch Cabell and the divines who composed the KJV.

Having become a more careful prose reader since then, I would also add Thomas Jefferson and William Cobbett.

Cobbett's a beautiful writer but his concerns are now too dated (too lost, too political) that an obviously great work like Rural Rides is a struggle to get through. Thomas Jefferson is quaint at best, but then I've only read Notes on the State of Virginia, some letters, and an obvious document or two. Any recommendation there?
Boswell's a comfy stylist, as is Henry Adams.

Ruskin is a word-painter, educate yourself. victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/genreov.html

Post some exerts for non-anglo plebs pls

I'd add Samuel Johnson, but Gibbon will do if you think Johnson is too elevated.

>Boswell
>Adams
>even close to Jefferson
lol
Name anything by them comparable to the declaration of independence
>"educate yourself"
>that link
Typical Ruskin brainlet. Quote one passage of his that even remotely approaches the best of Browne, de Quincey, or Lincoln

You'd have to be a tard to enjoy his writing. As Coleridge said, his style is detestable.

Not long ago, I was slowly descending this very bit of carriage-road, the first turn after you leave Albano, not a little impeded by the worth successors of the ancient prototypes of Veiento. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of Albano, and the graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber; the upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure, half aether and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour, it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock--dark though flushed with scarlet lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound, and over all, the multidinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.

I think one of the reasons why I like him is because I read Boswell's Life of Johnson first, so when I read The Rambler I was better able to understand what he meant.

Not long ago, I was slowly descending this very bit of carriage-road, the first turn after you leave Albano, not a little impeded by the worthy successors of the ancient prototypes of Veiento. It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of Albano, and the graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber; the upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep palpitating azure, half aether and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour, it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock--dark though flushed with scarlet lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound, and over all, the multidinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.

I think you're all forgetting someone.

I always end up skimming over those kinds of Victorian excesses.

I meant Gibbon, not Johnson
There is nothing remarkable in that. It's cumbrous and meandering. You really think it stands up to the prologue of Urn-Burial or the Gettysburg Address? It's utterly forgettable.

Yes, it is comparable. Frankly the Gettysburg address does not hold up. It is tumescent and cumbrous. Completely catchpenny.

You'd have to be an idiot to find the Gettysburg Address cumbrous. It's almost like a poem in its brevity, precision, and climaxes. There are very few things like it in all of literature.

What you posted is forgettable. I doubt if anyone ever forgot the Gettysburg Address.

muh Addisonian Termination

I'm making fun of your bad taste lad. Gettysburg Address is nothing special, and in fact thoroughly uninteresting. The only thing it is remembered for is it's context.

>posts a formless mass of descriptions
catchpenny
>calls a speech famous for its phrases and points of climax an historical relic
>"it's bad because it's bad"

>lol
Perhaps William Blake is every bit the poet William Wordsworth is, but asking someone to compare the Tyger with The Prelude would be inane..
Though Henry Adams wrote a long history on the administration of Thomas Jefferson, he never wrote a brief decleration for his or any country's political sovereignty- so nothing either Adams or Boswell wrote can be compared to the DOI. However Jefferson's Natural History CAN be compared to any one of Adams' political histories or commentaries, or any one of Boswell's Journals or Life (a copy of which Jefferson himself possessed). Do (you) seriously contend that Jefferson surpasses either Adams or Boswell as a stylist given adequate criteria for judgement?

Yes it's bad because it's bad. The phrases and points of climax are rote, jejune, and uninteresting. Try a little harder next time.

Jefferson's natural history? The only thing by him of that sort I've come across has been a collection of loosely written natural observations, so you would seem to be falling into the sort of mistake you ascribe to my posts.

Blake and Wordsworth were men of very different talents, but that doesn't mean they cannot be compared in respect to the general quality of their work. Otherwise we would never be able to say that Shakespeare, whose rhymes are not extraordinary, was any better than a genius rhymer like Swinburne. But obviously he was.

>criticizes what is widely regarded as a prose masterpiece
>misuses the word rote
kek'd

I was referring to Notes which doubles as a kind of argument for the society he has in mind (as well as a mini natural history of the state). Read it? It isn't Selborne, but an adequate extended work of his by which comparisons may be drawn..
While at it, we can add Gilbert White to the list.

What about kipling and tennyson

Parts of that work are literally notes without much attention to form or order. But it is better written than anything by Adams or Boswell.

The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.

That is an ordinary specimen of Jefferson's prose. It is clear, smooth, and vivid writing, and flawless in conveying the message of its author.

It's rote because you learn about it from elementary school on. And no one regards it as a prose masterpiece except for (you).

Let's be honest here and face the fact that you did misuse so simple a word as rote. You did not say that I had learned it by rote, but rather to describe the "phrases and climaxes" of the address.

It's okay if basic English is too difficult with you. Diction can be tricky. Just don't pretend to any attainments above the level of a high school janitor.
>all of these posts and not one substantial piece of censure on the address

And yet it's the most sustained piece of writing Thomas Jefferson ever wrote, ca. 120 pp. Why? Because though adequate at writing, he wasn't really a writer so much as a planter, a reader, a statesman, a proto-pragmatist philosopher, and a dabbler. A polymath no doubt when set amongst his contemporary countrymen, but no Goethe, and certainly no writer (perhaps by choice) comparable to writers who wrote for their livelihoods.
Better stylistically than either Boswell or Adams? Presenting an indifferent little cento headed by the announcement that it's better than anything the first modern biographer or the author of Mt. St. Michel and Chartres ever wrote tells me a sum total of nothing the grand total of which is that it doesn't matter what I post, youre going to insist upon your choice. Unlike Jefferson youre clearly more concerned with being right than being just. In other words youre shit-posting, if in a grander 'style' than most, ironically.

>And yet it's the most sustained piece of writing Thomas Jefferson ever wrote, ca. 120 pp
I think his parliamentary manual exceeded 220 pages
> polymath no doubt when set amongst his contemporary countrymen, but no Goethe,
A greater man than the philistine Goethe.
>Better stylistically than either Boswell or Adams? Presenting an indifferent little cento headed by the announcement that it's better than anything the first modern biographer or the author of Mt. St. Michel and Chartres ever wrote tells me a sum total of nothing the grand total of which is that it doesn't matter what I post, youre going to insist upon your choice. Unlike Jefferson youre clearly more concerned with being right than being just. In other words youre shit-posting,
I don't see anything here except stupid butt-frustration. I told you why his prose is much better than that of Adams or Boswell and posted a very usual piece of his writing. Can you post anything by the other two that exceeds it? If you want your posts to matter, then include a few actual thoughts.

It's just an okay speech. You can indulge in and enflate mediocrities as much as you want but don't act surprised when cultured men spend their time on more richly rewarding objets d'art.

Sorry, I'll not play the mutual insult game, which, unfortunately, is all (you) have to offer. Better luck being completely wrong next time!

The second volume of the Adams-Jefferson letters should be in curricula!