[53] thought, and when sets of the “Modern British Essayists” had taken the place in young men's libraries of the “British Essayists” of Addison's period. The result was a well-bred, clearly written, somewhat prosaic style common to both nations, but practically brought to an end by Carlyle with his impetuous vigor and by what Holmes called “the Macaulay-flowers” of literature. These influences in England, with the rise of Emerson and Parker in America, brought a distinct change, and Lowell eminently contributed his share when Professor Bowen, editing the North American, complained of his articles as being “too brilliant.” Since that day authors have been allowed to be as brilliant as they can, in all periodicals, although they have not uniformly availed themselves of this privilege.
This text is part of:
[53] thought, and when sets of the “Modern British Essayists” had taken the place in young men's libraries of the “British Essayists” of Addison's period. The result was a well-bred, clearly written, somewhat prosaic style common to both nations, but practically brought to an end by Carlyle with his impetuous vigor and by what Holmes called “the Macaulay-flowers” of literature. These influences in England, with the rise of Emerson and Parker in America, brought a distinct change, and Lowell eminently contributed his share when Professor Bowen, editing the North American, complained of his articles as being “too brilliant.” Since that day authors have been allowed to be as brilliant as they can, in all periodicals, although they have not uniformly availed themselves of this privilege.
2.
Whatever may be said, in the light of changing schools of philosophy, as to the more or less shadowy opinions which lay behind the movement called Transcendentalism, there can be no doubt that, so far as literature went, it was the
Macmillan, 1900.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.