The figure of the firft Matvoll,

ARTILLERY MASKED BY INFANTRY

(From Robert Ward's Animadversions of Warre, 1639. The dots represent a plan view of the formations, the rear rank of each battalion being shown in elevation.) (See page 257.)

1500

Studies in Philology

Volume XVIII

April, 1921

Number 2

?

"ATTIC PROSE" IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
BY MORRIS W. CROLL

I

Two terms present themselves to the literary historian seeking
name for the new kind of style that came into general use in Latin
and all the vernacular languages at the end of the sixteenth
century. Anti-Ciceronian prose' has the merit of indicating the
character of the controversy out of which the new tendency emerged
victorious: it connects the successful movement led by Lipsins,

1

'It is perhaps necessary to say that the present paper is part of a more
extended study with the same title, the object of which is to show that the
successful Anti-Ciceronian movement inaugurated by Muret, Lipsius, Mon-
taigne, and Bacon, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, gave a me
direction to European prose-style and determined its characteristie forms
throughout the seventeenth century. For the history of this movement
and the description of the forms of style which it created, the reader must
be referred to other parts of this study, not yet published.

Various discussions of the Ciceronian movement of the Renaissance are
familiar, and in all of these the earlier phases of the opposition to it
led by Erasmus, Pico, and others receive due attention. On the other
hand, the decisive Anti-Ciceronian movement of the last quarter of the
century has heretofore received but cursory mention, as by Norden (Die
Antike Kunstprosa, 778-9), Sandys (Ciceronianism, in Harvard Lectures
on the Revival of Learning), and Izora Scott (Controversies over the Imi-
tation of Cicero, 106-111). Miss Scott concludes with the unhappy state-
ment that "barring a few individual dissertations... controversial writ-
ing on the question ceased with the contribution of Muretus." An account
as full as the limits of my subject permitted is given in my paper in the
Revue du Seizième Siècle (11, 1914, 200-242) on Juste Lipse et le Mouve
ment Anti-Cicéronien.

79

Montaigne, and Bacon with the frustrated efforts of Erasmus, Budé, and Pico early in the sixteenth century. But it is open to several objections. In the first place, it indicates only revolt, suggests only destructive purposes in a movement that had definite rhetorical program. Secondly, it may be taken as describing a hostility to Cicero himself, in the opinions of the new leaders, instead of to his sixteenth-century "apes," whereas in fact the supreme rhetorical excellence of Cicero was constantly affirmed by them, as it was by the ancient Anti-Ciceronians whom they imitated. And thirdly, it was not the term usually employed in contemporary controversy, and was never used except by enemies of the new movement. The only name by which its leaders and friends were willing to describe the new style during the century of its triumph, from 1575 to 1700, was Attic."

66

For these reasons 66 Attic" is the preferable term, and should take its place in literary history as the name of the dominant tendency in seventeenth-century prose-style in contrast with that of the sixteenth century. To use it at the present time, however, for this purpose, without a full and clear explanation of the meaning attached to it could only cause positive misunderstanding or utter confusion. For it is a word that has suffered vicissitudes. In current and uncritical literary writing of the last two centuries it has often been employed to designate a style conformed to the conversational customs of a well-trained and sophisticated societythe society of Paris in the eighteenth century rather than of Athens in the age of Pericles. This meaning, it is true, was imposed by a later age than the seventeenth century and might safely be disregarded, the more safely, indeed, because it does not correspond to any of the more important meanings recognized as sound by the best students of antiquity. But unhappily in the usage of classical scholars themselves the word does not now carry a single and definite meaning; and the most recent researches tend to add complexity rather than clearness to its history. For the truth is that it was never a formalized word of rhetorical theory in ancient

Montaigne is franker than any other of the leaders in expressing & dislike of Cicero. Yet he admires his eloquence. "There is no real excellence in him," he says, "unless his eloquence itself is so perfect that it might be called a real and substantive excellence." Of course part of the point of this is, however, in the implied doubt of the value of pure eloquence, in itself; for no Ciceronian would think of doubting it.