Macaulay's style is highly artificial, but its rotundity, its movement,
its impressive sweep have made it popular. Almost any one can acquire
some of its features; but the ease with which it is acquired makes it
dangerous in a high degree, for the writer becomes fascinated with it and
uses it far too often. It is true that Macaulay used it practically all
the time; but it is very doubtful it Macaulay would have succeeded so well
with it to-day, when the power of simplicity is so much better understood.
De Quincey's "impassioned prose" was an attempt on his part to imitate
the effects of poetry in prose. Without doubt he succeeded wonderfully;
but the art is so difficult that no one else has equalled him and prose
of the kind that he wrote is not often written. Still, it is worth while
to try to catch some of his skill. He began to write this kind of
composition in "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater," but he reached
perfection only in some compositions intended as sequels to that book,
namely, "Suspiria de Profundis," and "The English Mail Coach," with its
"Vision of Sudden Death," and "Dream-Fugue" upon the theme of sudden death.
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