Let's say for starters. Suggest the decay of syntax, the morbid state of English prose, the incipient senile ataxy of English; topics that are large, fair and just; the languor of senility, the inherited modes of expression. It has been going on for more than a century. The formlessness which is incipient in the essayists of the early nineteenth century was rapidly aggravated; what are the most serious vices of modern prose?
Is it easily damaged, and painfully mended? "Most descriptive and deliberate prose deals far more with the permanent than with the shifting elements of life and language; and as it is not necessary, neither is it desireable that it should suffer rapid changes."
The most serious and orderly prose? "There is no question of seeking to perpetuate an outworn fashion, but of eradicating certain innovations which can be shown to be definitely vicious."
Misapprehension? "The words are the same, but they are used with less accuracy and arranged with less care." Even critical ears have grown indifferent. Is it apparent that "any beauty in modern English prose can be only the beauty of decay?"
The order of the eighteenth-century sentence was no doubt too formal and its rhythm too regular. Thus it was held inadmissible to close a sentence on an insignificant word.
