Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator (Studies in Book and Print Culture) [1 ed.] 0802093647, 9780802093646

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading
2 Pausing for Effect
3 Pausing for Breath
4 Writing Polite Letters
5 The Birth of the Recreational Diary
6 The Birth of the Narrator
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y

Citation preview

SILENT READING AND THE BIRTH OF THE NARRATOR

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Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

ELSPETH JAJDELSKA

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9364-6

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Jajdelska, Elspeth Jajdelska, Elspeth Silent reading and the birth of the narrator / Elspeth Jajdelska. (Studies in book and print culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9364-6 1. Silent reading – History – 18th century. 2. Books and reading – History – 18th century. 3. Narration (Rhetoric) – History – 18th century. 4. Silent reading – History – 17th century. 5. Books and reading – History – 17th century. 6. Narration (Rhetoric) – History – 17th century. 7. Fiction – History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. Z1003.J335 2007

028'.09032

C2007-905354-8

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

For Mary and Alastair Findlay

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 1 Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 21 2 Pausing for Effect 43 3 Pausing for Breath 76 4 Writing Polite Letters 110 5 The Birth of the Recreational Diary 130 6 The Birth of the Narrator 166 Appendix 195 Bibliography 197 Index

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Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the University of Strathclyde for financial assistance in the publication of this book. I am also grateful to Lorna Scammell (formerly Weatherill) for permission to reproduce the material in table 1.1. The generous terms of a visiting fellowship at St John’s College, Oxford, allowed me to research much of the manuscript material in chapter 6. I also thank the staff at the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, and the Bodleian. An earlier version of chapter 1 appeared in History of Education 33 (2004), 55–73, and parts of chapter 5 appeared in The Seventeenth Century 17 (2002), 108–30. Among the friends and colleagues who read drafts of chapters, I must first mention Jeremy Smith. Jeremy’s inspiring undergraduate classes on Middle English at Glasgow University first awakened my interest in the history of speech and writing. More recently, Jeremy took the time to read the entire first draft of this book, and his suggestions improved it immeasurably. Jonathan Hope was a supportive supervisor of the doctorate which provided some material for chapters 3 and 5, and he also made valuable comments on an early draft of chapter 4. Tiffany Stern made a range of very useful suggestions after reading drafts of chapters 1, 2, and 5, and Wojciech Jajdelski read chapter 6 with his usual thoroughness and intelligence and identified a number of useful references. Wojciech has also been a stimulating friend to the book from the beginning, and his conversation has clarified many problems. Anna Williams saved me from statistical shame by commenting on an earlier version of chapter 3. Finally, I am very grateful to the anonymous readers at the University of Toronto Press for the errors they pointed out and the improvements they suggested. None of these people is responsible for the book’s remaining flaws.

x Acknowledgments

I owe a great debt to Jill McConkey at the University of Toronto Press for her encouragement and for her persistence and patience through the long process of bringing the book to press. The copy-editor, Theresa Griffin, made every page clearer and substantially improved the whole book. Jonathan Sawday, Nigel Fabb, and Jonathan Hope from Strathclyde University’s English department offered advice and support from the book’s earliest stages. Tiffany Stern was a generous source of solace, amusement, and hospitality, not to mention information. Sarah Snashall’s professional insight and unfaltering friendship helped me through the anxious times. Alastair Findlay, Kevin Findlay, Mary Findlay, and Rachel Findlay provided help and sympathy at every stage of the book’s development. Others who heard without complaint rather more about the history of silent reading than they might wish include Adam Budd, Ed Hollis, Jason Orringe, Katie Overy, and Bernd Schroers. Without the unstinting support of Wojciech Jajdelski I could not have finished the book: Jestes jak zdrowie, Wojtku. Fergus Jajdelski held things up, and I am deeply grateful to him for doing so. This book is about the difference that reading can make in childhood. My own childhood was blessed by parents who encouraged me to read, as they encouraged everything that might make me happy. The book is dedicated to them with love.

SILENT READING AND THE BIRTH OF THE NARRATOR

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Introduction

In this book, I argue that in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth century prose style and narrative were transformed by the emergence of roles for assumed readers and implied writers (although these terms would not have been used at the time). The structure and style of earlier prose imply a reader who read aloud to an audience, and whose physical presence acted as an orientation point for time and space in the text. The structure and style of later prose imply a silent reader who conceives of himself or herself as the hearer of an internal voice, that of the notional writer. The transition between these two kinds of prose involves a radical change in the reader’s orientation towards the text. Reading aloud makes the reader’s body the point of orientation for any spatial or temporal references in the text. In silent reading, these spatial and temporal references must be realized in the reader’s imagination, in more abstract ways. Moreover, reading aloud creates a discourse structure with more than one participant, including some who might potentially interrupt or otherwise take part. Reading silently reduces these participants to an absent writer, unable to interact with the reader, and a reader who must adopt the role of an assumed reader in order to make sense of the text. As well as describing this transformation, I account for it by referring to changing reading practices. My hypothesis is that an already growing number of skilled and habitual silent readers reached a critical mass in this period. This critical mass was the point at which fluent silent reading could be assumed in a sufficiently large number of readers to justify addressing these readers in texts specifically suited to silent reading. As with other reading practices, material evidence for the precise extent to which reading was silent is scarce. But there is substantial evidence

4 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

concerning the material conditions under which readers read in the period, and the degree to which these conditions permitted or encouraged silent reading. I argue that these conditions were changing in the period in such a way that for the first time a critical mass of readers could become skilled in fluent silent reading. The book therefore can be seen as both describing important changes in prose style and narrative, and providing a hypothesis accounting for these changes. I draw in the book on three different fields of scholarship: the history and criticism of the early novel; the history of prose style in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; and the history of reading in the same period. All three fields have benefited from major scholarly developments in recent years. Indeed, the speed at which development has taken place in the study of the early novel has led Terry Castle to state that ‘the ball of eighteenth century novel studies has been definitively kicked through the goal posts’ (quoted in Davis, 2000, p. 480). The history of prose style in the same period has also been transformed, by the work of Biber and Finegan (1989), Fitzmaurice (1994, 2000), and McIntosh (1998), among many others. The history of reading has been equally well served. Panoramic histories by Chartier and Manguel have influenced a wide variety of disciplines (Chartier, 1988; Manguel, 1997), and the history of reading at the turn to the eighteenth century has benefited from valuable work by the contributors to volumes edited by Raven and others (1996) and Rivers (1982b, 2001), again among many others. This wealth of scholarship provides the background for my central hypothesis: in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, for the first time in England, a large enough group of children became sufficiently skilled in silent reading to constitute (in adulthood) an audience for a new style of writing. This style arose from the development of a new model of reading, as hearing rather than as speaking (these terms are discussed in more detail below). The change in underlying reading models, and consequently in prose styles, created a need for what is now called ‘the narrator’ and was central to the development of all kinds of prose genres, including the novel. Changing reading models of this kind also interacted with the growing culture of politeness and new conceptions of the self. The emphasis here on skilled silent reading should not, of course, be interpreted as a claim that there was no silent reading before 1700 and no reading aloud afterwards. Saenger has shown that during the Middle Ages a substantial body of monks read silently (Saenger, 1997). And from antiquity to the present day it is possible to find examples of

Introduction

5

both kinds of reading. Among the best-known examples of an early silent reader is St Ambrose, as represented by his pupil St Augustine, in the fourth century: When he was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. He did not restrict access to anyone coming in, nor was it customary even for a visitor to be announced. Very often when we were there, we saw him silently reading and never otherwise … We wondered if he read silently perhaps to protect himself in case he had a hearer interested and intent on the matter, to whom he might have to expound the text being read if it contained difficulties, or who might wish to debate some difficult questions. If his time were used up in that way, he would get through fewer books than he wished. Besides, the need to preserve his voice, which used easily to become hoarse, could have been a very fair reason for silent reading. (Augustine, 1991, VI.iii (3), pp. 92–3)

Ambrose, then, was an accomplished silent reader in the fourth century. But the passage does not suggest that his was a common accomplishment. Augustine implies that it was unusual to read silently, and feels a need to try to account for Ambrose’s reading habits. He even implies that reading aloud encourages listeners to interrogate the reader, as though Ambrose is responsible for the ideas he utters. In Augustine’s world, then, reading aloud is considered the normal way to read. Just as examples of silent reading can be found in late antiquity, instances of reading aloud are not hard to find in the twenty-first century – there are readings from the Bible in churches, formal speeches and lectures, and radio serializations of novels. Moreover, it is still possible to find adults in developed societies who have difficulty, perhaps as a result of educational disadvantage in childhood, in reading silently. Yet although the two kinds of reading can be found in both the earlier and the later period, there has been a decisive shift in expectations. A visitor to the home of a scholar in the present day would not be at all surprised to find him or her reading silently. On the contrary, there would be surprise if the scholar were reading aloud. Between Augustine’s time and the present day, then, there must have been a turning point in reading practices, when the balance of emphasis moved from reading aloud to reading silently. Saenger has shown that silent reading was already widespread in medieval monasteries. But when did silent reading become the default assumption among a wider

6 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

population, and when was it sufficiently common to support a new style of writing? Chapter 1 provides evidence that the conditions were in place for this turning point in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. That was when the number of well-off city dwellers with the opportunity to become expert silent readers grew sufficiently large to support a new kind of writing.

Models of Reader A change from reading aloud to skilled silent reading is important because it radically changes the underlying model of what writing and reading are. Reading aloud creates an identification between the writer and the reader. The reader is a speaker, the writer’s mouthpiece, with the writer’s words in his or her mouth. Silent reading creates a different relationship between writer and reader. Instead of identifying with the writer as a speaker of his or her words, the reader becomes an (internal) hearer of the writer’s words. So the move from reading aloud to reading silently involves a move from reading as speaking to reading as hearing, and from reading as declamation to reading as silent participation in an imaginary conversation between writer and reader. This is a radical change in the orientation of both writer and reader to the text. At this point, it is important to distinguish the contrast between ‘the reader as a speaker’ and ‘the reader as a hearer’ from more familiar binaries such as ‘oral versus literate’ and ‘spoken versus written.’ The terms ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ have been widely deployed in the fields of literature and anthropology, particularly since Walter Ong’s influential Orality and Literacy (1982). Ong’s work implies (though does not make explicit) a scale running from oral to literate, on which a work of prose might be situated, for example, more towards the ‘oral’ end or more towards the ‘literate’ end (Ong himself talks of ‘residual orality’ and ‘internalized literacy’). In this model, a written text can be described as ‘oral’ if it exhibits features more commonly associated with communication in oral societies (see, for example, Ong’s work on Tudor prose, 1965). More recently, scholars like Fox (2000) have questioned the starkness of the oral-literate contrast, by describing societies in which the oral and the literate not only coexist but interact in complex ways. The terms ‘spoken’ and ‘written’ are more narrowly associated with the field of linguistics. Here too, earlier research emphasized the differences between speech and writing, whereas more recent work illustrates the degree of variation within speech and writing, which

Introduction

7

complicates the relationship between the two (see, for example, Biber, 1988). Both sets of binaries, then – ‘oral versus literate’ and ‘spoken versus written’ – are founded in an opposition which has been softened by subsequent research. The contrast between ‘the reader as a speaker’ and ‘the reader as a hearer’ is not like these other contrasts, in part because it cannot be expressed on a scale. A model reader can either be speaking the text or (inwardly) hearing it. But it is not possible to carry out the roles of speaker and hearer simultaneously. The historical move from one model to other, of course, is unlikely to take place in an abrupt way in a society which is changing. However rapid or inexorable the spread of literacy and print, at the start of the eighteenth century England was still a society in which the illiterate, the partially literate, the highly accomplished reader and writer, and many other kinds of reader coexisted. But once the model of the reader as a silent hearer of the text was available, a writer commencing a text would be unable to assume both models of reader at the same time and the same point in the text. In a society of mixed literacy in which the model of the reader as a hearer was available, therefore, we might expect to find some texts which assumed this newer model of the reader and other texts which assumed the older model of the reader as a speaker, or, possibly, longer texts which alternated between the two models. If the model reader is a speaker, then the text is modelled around the reader’s physical presence, the reader being an embodiment of a speaker uttering the words to embodied hearers. If the model reader is a hearer, then an imagined, non-embodied, and absent writer is addressing a reader who is bodily present, but who, in order to comprehend the imagined voice, is playing the part of assumed reader, distinct from the embodied reader holding the book. My book shows that this change in context – from embodied speaker and audience to non-embodied hearer and imagined writer – has radical consequences for style and narrative structure. The contrast between two models of reader is therefore rather more precise than the contrasts between oral and literate or speech and writing. The transition from one model to the other might be prolonged and take place in a society of mixed and interacting degrees of literacy. But the model of the reader as a hearer can come into being only at a point when there is a critical mass of very accomplished silent readers – enough to support the publication of texts based on this model. Its appearance in history, then, can potentially be identified more precisely than the beginnings of the broader ‘literate society.’ And from the first

8 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

appearance of the new model, a writer engaged in any given text must choose between one and the other; it is not possible to occupy a position halfway between them, where the reader is half a speaker and half a reader. The absolute nature of the contrast can perhaps best be understood visually. The reader as a speaker can be pictured as addressing a group of people, few enough that the listeners can follow the speaker’s facial expressions and gestures, but numerous enough to behave collectively – to laugh, cry, or heckle as one audience rather than as disparate individuals. This reader knows his or her text well, perhaps even by heart, and is able to perform the words to the audience rather than simply reading them. The reader as a speaker is an actor or an orator, a performer of the text to others. By contrast, the notion of the reader as a hearer might best be understood through introspection – by inspection of ourselves while reading silently. To the outside observer, there is little or no way in which to discern what the reader feels about the text. The encounter between the imagined speaking voice of the text and the listening reader is taking place internally. There is no crowd to laugh or jeer, to speed the reader up or slow him or her down. Silent (and fluent) reading in modern industrialized societies is now so widespread that the older model of reader – that of the reader as a speaker – has become almost invisible. The only place for this model might be in scripts for film, television, or theatre, and even there the ubiquity of silent reading means that dramatists feel obliged to give their readers copious stage directions. In the early modern period, such directions might have been rendered unnecessary by the prevalence of a uniform skill of reading aloud. The metaphor that ‘reading is hearing’ is ubiquitous today, as common in the scholarly worlds of linguistics and literary criticism as it is in ordinary speech. Janet Dean Fodor quotes a number of statements made by linguistic scholars: ‘[Slowiaczek and Clifton’s] paper begins: “The subjective experience of hearing a voice inside one’s head while reading seems nearly universal” … Rayner and Pollatsek write even more strongly “… we all hear an inner voice pronouncing the words that our eyes are traversing as we read” … Rayner and Pollatsek cite Brown … claiming that “When you read a letter from someone you know very well, such as your mother, you often can hear her accent, or stress, or intonation pattern”’ (Fodor, 2002a, p. 2). In literary criticism, the idea of reading as

Introduction

9

hearing is all but indispensable. Bakhtin, Genette, and Booth, three of the most influential narrative theorists of the last hundred years, depend heavily on the concept of the text as having a voice (or voices) heard by the reader. The concept of voice, single or multiple, is indispensable to Bakhtin’s theories of literature: ‘Heteroglossia, once incorporated into the novel (whatever the forms for its incorporation), is another’s speech in another’s language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way. Such speech constitutes a special type of double-voiced discourse … In such discourse there are two voices, two meanings and two expressions’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 324). For Genette and Booth, the idea of reading as hearing produces the ‘implied author.’ In Booth’s influential Rhetoric of Fiction, for example, the concept of a voice heard by the reader is so pervasive that the voice can be assigned to a notional person or persons: ‘It is a curious fact that we have no terms either for this created “second self” or for our relationship with him … “Persona”, “mask”, and “narrator” are sometimes used, but they more commonly refer to the speaker in the work who is after all only one of the elements created by the implied author and who may be separated from him by large ironies’ (Booth, 1991, p. 73). Booth’s idea of the implied author could emerge only because of the transition from reading as speaking to reading as hearing. Genette also describes reading as a kind of engagement between notional persons, one of them an ‘implied reader’: ‘The extradiegetic narrator … can aim only at an extradiegetic narratee, who merges with the implied reader and with whom each real reader can identify’ (Genette, 1986, p. 260). The idea that reading is hearing continues to pervade literary criticism. A 2001 edition of New Literary History was devoted to ‘voice and human experience.’ In the contributions on literature, it is widely assumed that the ‘voice’ in question emerges from the text and is ‘heard’ by the reader. Discussion focuses on the nature of the voice or voices and the nature of the hearing, rather than on questioning the fundamental concept of reading as hearing. Fludernik, for example, writes that ‘it does not really matter to a reader who is speaking’ (Fludernik, 2001, p. 619), and Aczel writes of ‘reading as an over-hearing of voices’ (Aczel, 2001, p. 597). Nor is it only in the scholarly world that the older idea of ‘reading as speaking’ has become invisible. The extracts below are taken from nonprofessional reviews on www.amazon.co.uk of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans

10 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

and Martin Amis’s Experience. The first two readers use the verb ‘tell’ for the writer, thereby implying that the reader hears, and the third reader talks of a ‘voice’: The reader [of Wild Swans] feels that they are being told the facts and spared any emotionally-charged analysis. [The footnotes] draw the reader [of Amis’s Experience] away from the story that the author was trying to tell. I read [Experience] in two days and nights and was blown away by its exact, original and always modern voice.

Like the professional critics, these amateur reviewers move from the concept of reading as hearing to the creation of a notional person, ‘the reader.’ The other notional person – ‘the implied writer’ – is, under various guises, equally commonplace in everyday discussions of reading. For example, the following extracts from BBC Radio 4’s The Book Club mention ‘a persona’ and ‘the narrator’: James Naughtie: Does that mean that when a plot comes into your head, or when you work out a line of development in a story, you think to yourself, ‘ah this is a Vine’? Or do you know before you start? Barbara Vine: I know before I start … The idea itself that I’m going to work out varies from one persona to another. (www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/club/darkadaptedeye/transcript2.shtml) James Naughtie: Martin Amis, welcome to the Book Club. The narrator is wildly intrusive … The narrator does actually discuss things with characters in the book all the time. (www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/club/londonfields/transcript.shtml)

In linguistics, literary criticism, and everyday discourse, then, it is widely assumed that reading is a kind of hearing. The concepts of two notional people – ‘the narrator’ or ‘implied writer’ and ‘the reader,’ an imagined person distinct from any concrete reader – are also widely understood. But for readers and writers of earlier centuries these concepts may have been alien. Where the reader is a speaker, it is not easy, or even possible, to conceive of an implied writer addressing a universalized reader. The emergence of these new underlying models in the late

Introduction 11

seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, then, was a momentous event, the effect of which can be observed in changes to prose style. This is partly because the reader as speaker is addressing a third-party audience, real or imaginary, and the text is created for that audience by the physical presence of the reader. A writer who assumes such a reader can rely on the reader’s concrete presence to realize many features of the text by means of emphasis, gesture, and intonation. In the writer’s references to different locations, for example, such as ‘here’ and ‘there’, the locations can be realized by the speaker’s presence: ‘here’ is the speaker’s location, ‘there’ is wherever the speaker gestures to. Moreover, this writer will structure his or her style around the physical and social needs of speech, whether declamatory or conversational. But where the writer assumes a reader as a hearer, he or she must create a fictive persona who can address that reader in the physical absence of the writer. This writer is free of the constraints of speech, but instead is required to position a fictive writer in a consistent (though notional) location in time and space. The location can be created only by means of textual clues, incorporated, for example, in features such as viewpoint, and with the willing collaboration of the reader as a hearer. It is the fictive writer, with a consistent location in time and space, who has become known in more recent times as ‘the narrator’ or ‘the implied writer.’ The transition from the older model of reader to the newer one had profound effects on prose style. The period of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has long been considered one of momentous change in English prose style. Present-day readers, literary specialists or otherwise, who compare the prose of Milton with that of Locke cannot help but become aware of a gulf between the two, a gulf which seems wider than the number of years separating them. There has not always been agreement as to the precise nature of the change, however, and there is a variety of definitions and explanations of the ‘new style.’ In the 1930s, R.F. Jones located the change firmly in the seventeenth century, in arguing for the emergence of a ‘plain style’ at the time of the Restoration. Jones attributed its emergence to the influence of the Royal Society, whose members discouraged rhetorical ornamentation (Jones, 1971, pp. 53–89). Morris W. Croll disputed Jones’s claim that scientific writing was central to the changing style, and argued instead for the importance of rival Latin models: ‘Seventeenth-century prose is and remains Anti-Ciceronian and predominantly Senecan’ (Croll, 1971, p. 91). Perry Miller added Puritanism to science and Latin scholarship on the list of influences on prose style, in pointing out the Puritan

12 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

preference for ‘plain’ preaching, free of complex conceits and ornamentation (Miller, 1971, pp. 147–86). All these accounts look for an intellectual or ideological explanation of the ‘new style.’ Since the 1960s, however, accounts of changing prose style in the late seventeenth century have frequently referred to the increasing literacy during the period and to the growing importance of writing in comparison to speech. For example, in The Movement of English Prose, Ian Gordon concurs with the view that the period between 1660 and 1760 saw a dramatic change in prose style; his chapter ‘The Creation of Modern Prose’ accounts for the phenomenon, at least in part, in terms of increasing literacy (Gordon, 1966, p. 120). Celia Millward’s Biography of the English Language also ascribes stylistic change in the period to changing relations between speech and writing (Millward, 1988, p. 241). In the 1980s and 1990s, Biber and Finegan brought a new level of linguistic and technological sophistication to the question of speech and writing by applying computer analysis to the history of style in the period. Their research is structured around a contrast between spoken and written language, expressed in a number of ‘dimensions.’ These are statistically occurring bundles of features aligned with either speech or writing. The authors use these dimensions to assess whether texts in a corpus of English prose are more ‘written’ or more ‘oral’ in style, and conclude that prose style became increasingly ‘oral’ over a period of four hundred years (Biber and Finegan, 1989). McIntosh, though acknowledging the power of these methods, writes persuasively of the difficulties of capturing stylistic nuance in a corpus study, and uses more traditional techniques, especially the close reading of selected passages. Like Biber and Finegan, however, he considers the contrast between writing and speech to be central to the analysis of eighteenth-century style. His detailed analysis of a smaller selection of texts suggests that prose style continued to move in the direction of the ‘written’ throughout the eighteenth century (McIntosh, 1998). There is, then, general agreement that something important happened in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to English prose style. Earlier scholars like Jones, Croll, and Miller attribute the changes in style to changing tastes and ideology. They also locate the crucial point of change firmly in the seventeenth century rather than at the beginning of the eighteenth. Millward and Gordon argue that stylistic change in the period should be discussed with reference to speech and writing, and this approach was developed more rigorously in the 1980s and 1990s by Biber and Finegan.

Introduction 13

Even in these more recent studies, however, stylistic change has rarely been addressed in terms of reading practices in general and silent reading in particular. For example, though Biber and Finegan’s evidence for stylistic change is based on purely linguistic analysis, their explanations of the change refer to social organization, intellectual development, or taste, rather than to changes in reading practices which might have made older styles uncongenial or simply difficult to understand. McIntosh integrates linguistic and sociohistorical evidence in a fascinating and detailed account of prose style in the early and later eighteenth century. But in his discussion of increased literacy and stylistic change he treats ‘literate’ style as a matter of taste rather than a matter of relative competence in different kinds of reading. He writes, for example, that ‘an emerging print culture takes pains to make its written genres more obviously written and less like speech’ (McIntosh, 1998, p. 35). His expression ‘takes pains’ implies that the newer style is a matter of a choice, governed by taste, between stylistic options, rather than a product of changing models of reading and writing. Commenting on Swift’s style, for example, he suggests that the oral elements were part of a stylistic repertoire from which the spoken and the written could be chosen at will: ‘Swift’s astonishing ability to mimic the tones and cadences of spoken English seems to dominate his prose’ (McIntosh, 1998, p. 67). Interestingly, McIntosh goes on to argue that Swift was ‘aware of his own orality at some level’ and therefore to suggest that notwithstanding his earlier description of Swift’s mimicking speech as a skill, there were levels at which Swift was not conscious of his own orality. But this observation is not developed into an account of different models of reading. Other recent studies of prose style in the period have placed less emphasis on the contrast between speech and writing, but nonetheless have identified stylistic features which can be explained by a change from the model of the reader as a speaker to one of the reader as a hearer. Adamson’s survey of literary language in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is particularly revealing. She concurs with the many scholars who consider a fundamental change in prose style as characterizing the period. For her, however, the most decisive factors are not a generalized move from a spoken to a written style, but a marked tendency in the new style to connect words and phrases together more clearly and explicitly. Adamson identifies ‘connective strategies’ as central to the new prose style: ‘It is perhaps more than anything the new attention paid to connective strategies that causes the sea-change in prose which everyone

14 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

notices in passing from renaissance to neo-classical styles’ (Adamson, 1999, pp. 604–5). She discusses a range of these ‘connective strategies,’ which help the reader connect words or phrases with one another in a passage of prose. They include the substitution of pronouns for noun phrases (p. 605) and innovations in conjunctive adverbials such as ‘however’ (p. 607). The first strategy mentioned here, the use of pronouns instead of noun phrases, can help readers see that the same referent is involved in two different parts of a sentence or passage: 1. The large fierce dog was in a particularly bad mood. She threw the fierce dog a bone. 2. The large fierce dog was in a particularly bad mood. She threw him a bone. Conjunctive adverbials can help readers understand why one statement might follow another: 1. She vanished without trace. She left her diary behind her. 2. She vanished without trace. However, she left her diary behind her. In each example, the connective device can replace the effects of gesture, emphasis, and intonation, which are available to a reader as a speaker but not to a reader as a hearer. Adamson is also attentive to ‘discourse deictics’ such as ‘this, that, such’ (p. 606). I avoid the term ‘deixis’ in this book as it is prone to conceptual confusion (see, for example, Fludernik, 1993, and Green, 1995). For Adamson, the term refers to words whose primary function is to indicate spatial relationships (‘this cake’ is close to me while ‘that cake’ is not), and whose secondary functions can include ‘distinguishing levels of textual or emotional distance’ (Huddleston, 1984, pp. 296–7, cited in Adamson, 1999, p. 606). She discusses the broadening in function of such terms from the explicitly spatial during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. An example is the development of new uses for ‘there’: ‘The so-called “existential there” … belongs to this network of textual signposts. Like this and that, it began life as a spatial deictic and it retains much of this deictic force in its discourse function, which has caused some linguists to name it the “presentative there” … In Present Day English it is typically used to buttonhole the addressee/reader and to signal the newness of the information that follows. Breivik dates it to 1550, but it hasn’t then the same pragmatic status … Steele’s use in 1711 is fully modern’ (p. 606).

Introduction 15

Adamson’s account of the ‘new style,’ then, stresses increased connection between elements within texts and the development of terms which point to notional locations both within and outside the text. Unlike Biber and Finegan and McIntosh, who emphasize the rise of literacy, Adamson offers no explanation of why these particular changes should have taken place when they did. I argue that they may have arisen from the growth in the number of writers who assumed a reader who would read as a hearer rather than as a speaker. In the absence of emphasis, gesture, intonation, and so on, these writers needed to make textual connections more explicit. They also needed to create a notional location in time and space for the imagined writer. The period sees the emergence of two new roles – assumed hearer and imagined writer. The particular character of these roles, furthermore, was shaped by contemporary intellectual and social trends. Scholars such as Klein and Shapin have shown that two key intellectual and social concepts during the period were politeness and gentility (Klein, 1994a, 1994b; Shapin, 1994). Klein has discussed the association between the two: from the first, politeness was ‘identified with gentlemanliness since it applied to the social world of gentlemen and ladies’ (Klein, 1994a, p. 3). Not all gentlemen were polite, however. ‘Politeness’ may have been based on an ideal of social class, but ‘polite,’ or ‘proper,’ behaviour required art, irrespective of social origin. Shapin discusses the idea of gentlemanliness in connection with the Royal Society, and suggests that competence in scientific inquiry was assumed to be restricted to gentlemen (Shapin, 1994). Both Shapin and Klein observe the importance of polite language. As Klein puts it, ‘“politeness” was, among other things, a theory of conversational manners’ (Klein, 1994b, p. 33). Shapin quotes the antiquary Obadiah Walker’s advice on how a gentleman antiquary should converse: with moderation in argument, and the avoidance of pedantry (Shapin, 1994, p. 117). The concept of politeness, then, was inseparable from the concept of polite conversation. How could ‘polite conversation’ be realized in the written word? In the older model of reading, in which the reader was speaker to an unspecified audience, reading was more declamation than conversation. But the newer model of reading, in which the reader adopts the role of a hearer of the implied writer’s words, lends itself more easily to a conversational approach. Here, the writer addresses a single reader silently and therefore privately. Moreover, as I show in chapter 1, the new model of reading was initially restricted to those who could afford a sizeable number of books, in

16 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

other words, to those of higher social rank. The new model, then, was likely to be influenced by the new ideology of polite conversation. In chapter 4, I will discuss this influence in the context of letter writing in the period. Another important intellectual development in the period was in conceptions of the self, as documented in detail by Taylor’s Sources of the Self (Taylor, Charles, 1989), a history of concepts of the self from ancient times to the present day. In his chapter on Locke, Taylor observes that Locke’s conception of the self allows for detachment of oneself from one’s own ideas, preferences, and opinions: The disengagement both from the activities of thought and from our unreflecting desires and tastes allows us to see ourselves as objects of far-reaching reformation. Rational control can extend to the re-creation of our habits, and hence of ourselves … The subject who can take this kind of radical stance of disengagement to himself or herself with a view to remaking, is what I want to call the ‘punctual’ self. To take this stance is to identify oneself with the power to objectify and remake, and by this act to distance oneself from all the particular features which are objects of potential change. (Taylor, Charles, 1989, p. 171)

This punctual self has a counterpart in the new model of reading. The silent reader may not know the writer, and must create the writer’s voice internally. In doing so, he or she adopts the role of the assumed reader, not by speaking the writer’s words as an actor would and as a reader in the old model would, but by detaching himself or herself from his or her own ‘particular features’ (as Taylor puts it) in order to become the generalized assumed reader created by the writer. The relationship between the new model of reading and new ideas of selfhood is illustrated by changes in diary writing, discussed in chapter 5. I mentioned three fields of scholarship at the beginning of this introduction: the history and criticism of the early novel; the history of prose style in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; and the history of reading in the same period. Readers familiar with the history of reading or the early novel might be less familiar with the linguistic background to the history of prose style. Although chapters 2 and 3 involve some detailed linguistic discussion, I have attempted to explain linguistic terminology as it arises and to make all parts of the book accessible to non-specialists.

Introduction 17

Some readers from a literary or historical background may be surprised to find a work dealing with prose style that concentrates heavily on case studies of two writers, one of whom has no place in the literary canon, instead of accounting for changing style by means of an analysis of Behn, Dryden, Swift, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding. In chapters 2, 3, and 4, I use these detailed case studies to illustrate the difference between the older and newer models, and I do so for a variety of reasons. My aim in this book is not to provide a survey history of prose style in the long eighteenth century, comparable to McIntosh’s very useful account (1998). Nor is it my primary aim to add to existing literary criticism of the period’s great prose writers. Instead, I hope to show how a change in reading practices can lead to the production of a new model of the reader, which in turn can transform the approach to prose and narrative of a writer who adopts the new model. I hope my account will enable other scholars to think anew both about the history of prose style and about literary criticism. And in the final chapter I broaden the number of writers under discussion to include familiar ones like Swift, Defoe, and Haywood. But first of all the underlying ideas – ideas which I have not encountered elsewhere – must be made plain. Given that my purpose in the book is to account for a fundamental difference rather than to explore the impact of that difference in a thorough survey of the period, studying two writers in depth seems more suitable than sampling a wide range of writers in less detail. The choice of the two writers also deserves some explanation. I chose one of them – Joseph Addison – because his writing was regarded by both his peers and his successors as the best possible example of a style which was both innovatory and proper. Addison and Steele’s Spectator was an extraordinary success in early-eighteenth-century London, and Addison’s role as a model writer of good prose is well documented (for example, by Fitzmaurice, 1994, 2000). Addison is invaluable for a case study of a new prose style because he was perceived in his own day as innovatory. The second writer, by contrast, has no claim to literary fame. Ralph Thoresby was an antiquarian based in Leeds with a wide acquaintance among those connected with the Royal Society and who left a usefully large corpus of diaries, letters, and printed texts. He neither aspired to nor enjoyed literary fame during his lifetime or after it. What makes a case study of Thoresby preferable to a study of a more distinguished writer? The answer is that Thoresby perfectly illustrates the relationship between the writer’s assumed model of the reader and the writer’s style

18 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

owing to his failure to understand the new style despite a desire to adopt it. Thoresby was upwardly mobile, having ascended from the rank of merchant to that of gentleman and from the stigmatized ranks of the Nonconformists to those of the establishment Anglicans. He had a strong motivation to make his written language conform to the most recent norms in polite circles, and there is evidence that he strove to do so. Yet in most important respects he failed, as I show. Thoresby provides valuable evidence in support of the hypothesis that the new prose style was connected with a new model of reader, because his failures in adopting that style can best be accounted for by a conceptual block in the shape of the older model of reader. A more literary writer might have chosen the older style for aesthetic reasons. But in Thoresby’s case it is clear that the ‘old-fashioned’ qualities of his prose style persist despite his desire to adapt. He is therefore ideal for a case study offered in contrast to that of Addison. In chapters 2, 3, and 4, I discuss the prose of Addison and Thoresby. Chapter 1 sets the scene, with an account of the historical evidence for the changing conditions of reading in the period. Chapter 2 discusses the importance of pausing in the two models of writing, and illustrates the relationship between pausing and reading with reference to the use of punctuation by the two writers. Some scholars have argued that the history of punctuation should be seen in terms of a change in function from indicating oral effects to indicating syntactic ones. I argue, instead, that key punctuation marks continue to represent pauses, but that pauses can be distributed more freely where the writer assumes a reader as a hearer. Where the reader is a speaker, pauses are liable to several kinds of misinterpretation, including that of being seen as an invitation to the audience to interrupt. But where the reader is a hearer, pauses can be used more freely to indicate syntactic relationships. Changing punctuation practice, therefore, is symptomatic of a change in the model of reader. In chapter 3, I continue to analyse the relationships between reading as speaking, reading as hearing, and pausing, this time looking at their effect on syntactic structures. Declamatory speech must be sustained for longer periods without pausing than speech re-created silently by a reader as a hearer. A writer who assumes a reader as a speaker, then, must organize his or her language in long sequences of clauses. Very different from these sequences are the autonomous sentences which emerge from the pen of the writer who assumes a reader as a hearer.

Introduction 19

In chapter 4, I discuss the relation between ‘polite conversation’ and letter writing. I use Thoresby’s letters to various correspondents to illustrate a clash between the older and the newer models of reading and writing, and consider the role of manuscript circulation in letterwriting style. In chapter 5, I show that diary writing in the period also indicates a change from writing for a reader as a speaker to writing for a reader as a hearer. I consider the generic nature of seventeenthcentury diaries and suggest that they were considered to have a functional role, whether that role was scientific observation or pious self-scrutiny. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, a new kind of diary appears – the recreational diary. Here the diarist addresses an imagined reader in an intimate way familiar to presentday diarists; the diarist becomes a narrator. The chapter continues to draw on Thoresby as an invaluable source of examples, but also looks at a broader range of diaries to illustrate the degree to which diaries can be subdivided by genre. In chapter 6, I consider the relationship between models of reader and narrative prose. A selection from the prose fiction writers of the period shows that the older model of reader supported narratives which functioned almost as dramatic scripts, whereas the newer model required writers to create a consistent, though notional, location in time and space for a narrator.

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1

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading

In recent years, some prominent scholars and historians of reading have emphasized the gradual nature of the change in reading practices in the early modern period. Fox has discussed the interpenetration and interdependence of oral and literate cultures in early modern England, and suggested that rising literacy and the rising production of printed texts need not imply a rupture between the oral and the literate (Fox, 2000). The contributors to Andersen and Sauer’s volume on early modern reading have revealed the great variety of reading practices in the period (Andersen, 2001). Brewer, meanwhile, has questioned accounts of a dramatic shift in reading practices of the kind described by Engelsing (1974) in Germany. He points out that ‘intensive’ reading, defined as the minute examination and rereading of a limited range of texts, coexisted, and continues to coexist, with ‘extensive’ reading, defined as the more cursory reading of a wide range of texts: ‘Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the change in reading practices was not from “intensive” to “extensive” reading, but to more varied reading, ranging from repeated and careful examination of some texts to the perfunctory perusal of others. Obviously “extensive” reading depended upon a flourishing world of books, but it never extinguished “intensive” reading – which survives, not least in universities, to this very day’ (Brewer, 1997, pp. 170–1). In this chapter, I discuss the varying opportunities to acquire skills consequent upon the ‘engaged reading’ (defined below) available to the children of different social groups in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. I suggest that the children of well-off city dwellers with a ‘worldly’ outlook on life (that is, those less influenced by the Calvinism which had dominated the Interregnum) had greater opportunities to acquire these reading skills than the godly (often Nonconformists) and

22 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

the poor. The urban middle classes could afford to buy their children a significantly greater range of materials for unsupervised recreational reading, and those of them with a worldly outlook were ideologically inclined to permit such reading. That is not to say that the urban middle classes replaced one set of reading practices with another: they had the means to add certain reading skills to their children’s repertoire, but some chose to use those means and some did not. Among the lower classes, however, such means were rarely available. And the godly discouraged engaged reading for ideological reasons, even where they had the means to support it.

Engaged Reading Kirsch and others have defined engaged reading as reading which is varied, frequent, and recreational and which takes place regularly over many years in childhood. Reporting for the OECD, they note that ‘engagement in reading … (time spent reading for pleasure, time spent reading a diversity of material, high motivation and interest in reading) … varies widely from country to country’ (Kirsch et al., 2002, p. 106). Engaged reading through childhood is important because it permits, after many years, a level of competence not available to non-engaged readers. Kirsch and his fellow OECD authors have found that engaged reading is the most reliable single predictor for any given child of reading competence at the age of sixteen (p. 106). This finding echoes Lundberg’s conclusion, from a review of the literature on reading competence between the ages of nine and fourteen, that the number of books owned by his or her household is the single most important predictor of a child’s reading competence at fourteen (Lundberg, 1999, pp. 164–5). A substantial body of psychological research, moreover, suggests that silent reading is a product of prolonged experience in reading, and that it involves psychological processes not available to those less experienced readers who speak words as they read them (see Khosrow, 1999, pp. 134–94). The educationalist Margaret Meek has described silent reading as an important milestone in reading competence: It is not difficult to see when a child’s reading is improving. He stops reading word by word, he ‘chunks’ the meaning in phrases, his eyes turn confidently at the end of the line, and his intonation declares his grasp of the meaning. If he stumbles, he retraces his steps confidently. His mistakes are those made by skilled readers. (Everyone who reads

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 23 aloud makes some mistakes.) Before he reaches this stage of fluency, he has probably begun to read silently. Do not expect this to happen suddenly. (Meek, 1994, p. 82)

According to Meek, this level of competence precedes a further breakthrough, when, after many years of engaged reading, children can understand complex written narrative structures: ‘Every skilled adult reader takes all of this for granted. But these things have to be learned. Evidence shows that they come into regular use in competent readers round about the age of eleven as the result of a wide range of reading experiences and practice based on enjoyment of stories’ (p. 154). The opportunities to gain this level of competence increased for some children at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. Raven and others have discussed some of the difficulties involved in establishing a history of reading. Sources such as pictorial representations of reading can be highly misleading, for example, in that they resist simple categorizations such as ‘public’ and ‘private’ (Raven et al., 1996, p. 2). Moreover, there is a scarcity of sources on the size of the readerships of the past (pp. 5–7). Crucially, ‘It is essential to recognize that there can be no clear-cut procedure for the historical measurement of functional literacy’ (p. 10). For these reasons, a case for change of a particular kind in reading practices can be made only cautiously. But certain conditions were in place which would allow for the growth of engaged reading by the children of the well-off and worldly, though direct evidence that such reading was taking place on a greater scale than previously would be difficult to come by. I shall discuss these conditions under four headings: changing patterns of consumption and the ownership of books; contrasting views on the need to memorize when reading; contrasting views on the moral and educational status of recreational reading; and distinctions between varieties of reading aloud and reading silently. I shall conclude with some remarks on the nature of children’s literature in the period.

Patterns of Consumption As I have mentioned, Lundberg’s analysis of studies of reading competence across nations notes that ‘the number of books at home was the single most powerful predictor of reading achievement in most countries’ (Lundberg, 1999, p. 168). Ownership of books in the seventeenth century was likely related to disposable income. Whereas ownership of

24 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

books such as the Bible might be regarded as essential for the soul’s prosperity, ownership of a wide variety of reading matter, of the kind described by Kirsch and others in their analysis of engaged reading, was possible only for those who lived well above subsistence level. In recent years, there has been a stream of valuable research on consumer goods and consumer culture in the period which suggests that the number of people with disposable income expanded significantly (see, for example, Berg, 1999; Brewer, 1997; Brewer and Porter, 1994; Bermingham and Brewer, 1995). Unfortunately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to establish a detailed picture of the ownership of book titles per capita in the period; evidence concerning books as consumer goods tends either to be anecdotal or to proceed by analogy with other consumer goods. McKendrick has cautioned that ‘the embryonic signs of a consumer society’ in the late seventeenth century should not be confused with the rapid development of consumer society in the eighteenth century (McKendrick et al., 1983, p. 5). Weatherill, however, provides evidence from inventories which suggests that between 1660 and 1725 ownership of consumer goods per household grew rapidly in urban centres, especially London. For example, although London lagged behind other regions in the ownership of pictures in 1695, it was ‘clearly ahead’ by 1725. Ownership of utensils for tea, coffee, and chocolate shows a similar pattern. In 1715, 22 per cent of London households in the sample owned such utensils, compared to 9 per cent of households in Northeast England, 16 per cent in East Kent, and 0 per cent to 2 per cent everywhere else (Weatherill, 1996). The same pattern of markedly increased urban ownership of consumer goods can be seen in ownership of books. Unfortunately, the inventories state only the value of the books and give no details on the number or nature of titles. But the numbers do suggest a correlation between the growth in ownership of consumer goods in the urban middle class and growth in the ownership of books (see table 1.1). De Vries, summarizing Earle (1989), describes the period from 1660 to 1730 as one of ‘an almost revolutionary change’ in the consumption of clothes and the upgrading of domestic interiors, thereby indicating the presence of an urban elite with disposable income sufficient for the ownership of books on a scale previously rare (De Vries, 1994, p. 101). There is also anecdotal evidence to support the idea that the rise of consumer goods included books. Pepys is an example of an upwardly mobile Londoner who spent a significant part of his income on books. By 1666, his collection had expanded to the point where he commissioned

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 25 Table 1.1 Percentage of households whose inventories included books, 1675–1725 Region

1675

1685

London

18 9

NE England

1695

1705

1715

1725

15

19

38

31

52

9

12

8

14

_ 28

East Kent

28

25

29

25

23

Cambridgeshire

11

12

6

18

14

9

NW England

17

26

20

18

25

15

Hampshire

29

26

23

18

_

_

NW Midlands

22

15

15

11

17

9

Cumbria

14

17

15

17

22

15

Source: Weatherill, 1996, p. 49.

special bookcases; Tomalin reports that they were ‘the first-known purpose-built bookcases in England’ (Tomalin, 2002, p. 420 n30; see Sherman, 1996, p. 63, for a comparison of Pepys’s library with that of John Dee). In his discussion of Anna Larpent’s reading in the late eighteenth century, Brewer remarks on the dramatic change in book ownership over the course of the century. Larpent never considered books in terms of cost, but ‘took books for granted … This enviable position was comparatively novel’ (Brewer, 1996, p. 244). Elsewhere, Brewer points out that ‘for an exceptionally large social stratum culture was available as never before. When the London haberdasher, Robert Fotherby, died in 1709, he had no fewer than forty-four pictures hanging in his diningroom. A mercer who died four years earlier left his heirs almost a thousand books’ (Brewer, 1995, p. 348). Larpent’s attitude to books would have been rare in the early seventeenth century, as the libraries of two Irish ladies suggest. Whereas Anna Larpent read more than four hundred titles in the space of ten years, Lady Anne Hamilton of Dublin left a library of only fourteen books in 1639, and Lady Lettice Digby left twelve on her death in 1628 (Gillespie, 1999, p. 23). Owning books, of course, is not the same as having access to books, but it is an important support for engaged reading. The owner of a book is free of the need to acquire its contents thoroughly, confident that he or she can return to it later. So although access to print was found in all sections of society, opportunities for engaged reading were

26 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

restricted by income. Spufford, Watt, and Friedman have shown that the poor were amply supplied with popular literature in the early and midseventeenth century (Spufford, 1981; Watt, 1991; Friedman, 1993), yet that does not mean that ownership of a wide range of reading material was common among the poor. There are many examples of readers who may have encountered the texts described by Spufford, Watt, and Friedman without owning many or any of them. When the Puritan, and later Presbyterian, Richard Baxter condemned ‘idle’ reading, he described three groups who were likely to have plays or romances ‘in the hands’ rather than simply to hear them read aloud. One of these groups was children; the other two were ‘idle Gentlemen’ and ‘filthy, lusty Gallants.’ Both these latter groups might be ranked among the wealthier in society, who had disposable income to spend on books (Baxter, 1675, p. 157). Even the children of merchants could be restricted in their enthusiasm for books by insufficient income and leisure. In his 1673 account of his childhood as a merchant’s son, Francis Kirkman describes himself as a fervent reader of fiction, who spends whatever money he has on (relatively inexpensive) chapbook romances. But although he had money to buy these books, it is not clear that he could afford to keep them rather than lending or selling them to others. He was heavily dependent on borrowing books from, and lending them to, his school friends. He also says that he used ‘all the time I had from school’ to read the books, a useful reminder of how few children in the era might have had sufficient leisure time for engaged reading; his available time was Thursday afternoons and Saturdays. For all his enthusiasm, it is possible that he had the leisure and money to read only the eleven titles he mentions explicitly; he writes, ‘I in time had read most of these histories’ (although ‘these’ may mean ‘histories like these’; quoted in Wright, 1935, pp. 86–7). The practice he describes of circulating texts suggests that he may not have owned any of the titles for long. So a merchant’s son in the 1670s, although he had plenty of access to and some time for the kind of reading he enjoyed most, was nonetheless restricted in the range of his reading by income. Among the poor, the restrictions on range of reading were correspondingly greater. Richard Baxter and John Bunyan serve as useful examples of poor readers. Both men left detailed accounts of their reading histories, and both indicate at various points in their writings that whereas they had plenty of access to popular print through hearing works read or perhaps even borrowing them, money was an important constraint on ownership of even a

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 27

very limited number of books. Baxter’s father was a poor man, and the son’s account of the father’s reading suggests that they owned no book but the Bible: ‘Though we had no better teachers it pleased God to instruct and change my father, by the bare reading of the Scriptures in private, without either preaching or godly company, or any other books but the Bible’ (Baxter, 1974, p. 4). Baxter’s account of his childhood implies that his family continued to own no other book until he was fifteen years old: ‘A poor day-labourer in the town … had an old torn book which he lent my father, which was called Bunny’s Resolution … And in the reading of this book (when I was about fifteen years of age) it pleased God to awaken my soul … And about that time it pleased God that a poor pedlar came to the door that had ballads and some good books; and my father bought of him Dr. Sib’s Bruised Reed. This I also read’ (p. 6). A similar picture emerges from Bunyan’s writings. His account of his marriage portrays a household like Baxter’s which contained only two books besides the Bible, both of them works of practical piety: ‘Though we came together as poor as poor might be, (not having so much as a Dish or Spoon betwixt us both) yet this she had for her part, The Plain Mans Path-way to Heaven, and The Practice of Piety, which her Father had left her when he died. In these two Books, I should sometimes read with her, wherein I also found some things that were somewhat pleasing to me’ (Bunyan, 1666, p. 4). Rather than explaining why they owned so few books, Bunyan thinks it worth noting that they owned as many as two: the implication is that among the poor even cheap, pious literature, if owned rather than borrowed or listened to, had something of the status of a luxury good. In Bunyan’s often quoted account of the sins of idle reading, it is clear that money was an issue in the choice between reading scripture and reading something perhaps more entertaining: ‘I remember [the preacher] alledged many a Scripture, but those I valued not; the Scriptures, thought I, what are they? a dead letter, a little Ink and Paper, of three or four shillings price. Alas, what is the Scripture, give me a Ballad, a News book, George on Horseback, or Bevis of Southampton, give me some book that teaches curious Arts, that tells of old Fables; but for the holy Scriptures I cared not’ (Bunyan, 1675, p. 139). Baxter assumes that his followers might not be able to afford even those pious books which could save their souls: ‘Great store of all sorts of good books (through the great mercy of God) are common among us: he that cannot buy, may borrow. But take heed that you lose not your

28 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

time in reading romances, play-books, vain jests, or seducing or reviling disputes or needless controversies’ (Baxter, 1681, p. 99). He is also conscious that even if surplus income is available for books, time is generally in short supply for solitary reading, and that reading at work, when possible, was likely to be a communal affair: ‘It was of great advantage to me that my neighbours were of such a trade as allowed them time enough to read or talk of holy things; for the town liveth upon the weaving of Kidderminster stuffs, and as they stand in the loom they can set a book before them or edify one another’ (Baxter, 1974, p. 80). Kirkman’s account suggests that the children of merchants had opportunities for enjoying reading, but were not exposed to the range of reading material in childhood necessary for engaged reading. Bunyan’s and Baxter’s accounts suggest that the children of the poor were exposed to a wide range of print in one way or another, but might have time and money to read at leisure only one or two texts, and those only if they were as motivated to read as Bunyan and Baxter themselves were. As the works of Hannah Woolley suggest, however, some readers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries could afford to own a wide range of reading material. Her Gentlewomans Companion of 1675 offers advice for all classes of female servants, including governesses. In many respects, she presents her advice as going against the grain of contemporary theories of education. For example, she makes a point of her disapproval of physical punishment for young children (Woolley, 1675, p. 4). For upper-class girls she encourages wide and unsupervised reading of a kind which implies ownership of a broad range of texts. She recommends encouraging a child who may be ‘addicted to reading,’ for example, not by stipulating which texts should be read, but by questioning the child about whichever book she has chosen herself (p. 6). She also suggests that broad reading is to be encouraged as an aid to polite conversation (pp. 7–8). Woolley’s upper-class pupils, we can conclude, had the financial resources to support ownership of a broad range of books and therefore were able to become engaged readers. John Locke’s advice on teaching also implies that the children of the upper classes had access to a wide range of material. Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) deals with the education of boys (originally, one particular boy) rather than girls. It was conceived as a series of letters in the 1680s and printed for the first time in 1693. It proved to be influential; by 1761, it had been reprinted nineteen times. For Locke, the best way to teach reading literacy is not to have children memorize religious texts from a primer, but to give them books to read on their own, and to

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 29

make sure the books are to a child’s taste. He regrets that so few books are written especially for children (p. 186), thereby implying that his readers would have no financial difficulty in buying such specialized books for their own children. Moreover, his emphasis on leaving children to their own devices implies an assumption that there are enough books in a household to satisfy a child’s tastes and that books need not be borrowed from elsewhere. Like Baxter in his description of ‘idle Gentlemen,’ Locke uses the phrase ‘in his hands’ for children’s reading, suggesting that the child he refers to can be allowed to monopolize a book rather than share it or keep it for only a short time: ‘Some easy pleasant Book, suited to his Capacity, should be put into his Hands’ (p. 183). The late seventeenth century, then, offers a picture of opportunities for engaged reading as increasing among some social classes but not all. The period saw growing consumption by the urban middle classes, and there is no reason to believe that books were not among the consumer goods which these classes amassed. The poor, on the other hand, though they had access to a wide range of printed material, often continued to be restricted from owning a broad range of reading material in their own homes. That meant that even enthusiastic child readers of Bunyan’s and Baxter’s social class had far fewer opportunities for engaged reading than richer children. The middle classes, however, were able to start acquiring – and holding on to – a wider range of books, just as they were able to acquire and keep a wider range of clocks and tea cups. Upwardly mobile readers like Pepys and the readers of Locke and Woolley could offer their children the opportunity for ‘engaged reading,’ and for choosing as they wished from a wide range of texts, which they owned rather than borrowed.

Reading and Memorization Locke’s and Woolley’s recommendations concerning engaged reading assume a certain level of wealth. They also assume a certain attitude to reading, one in which reading can generally be divorced from the skill of memorization. A child reader who is encouraged to memorize whatever he or she reads cannot read as widely or as freely as an engaged child reader. Locke and Woolley in many ways departed from established teaching on the importance of memorization. They did so not just because their likely pupils were rich enough not to need to memorize, having the means to hold on to the texts they read. Some very

30 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

wealthy writers of the time, such as Lord Fairfax (discussed below), were clearly untroubled by the cost of books but nonetheless were advocates of memorizing whatever was read. Followers of Locke and Woolley, therefore, were not just free to let their children be engaged readers because they could afford it, but also willing to free their children from memorizing what they read, at least some of the time. Memorization was ubiquitous for readers of all levels of competence in the seventeenth century, from elementary to advanced, and for all social classes. There is abundant evidence, uncovered in recent years in the work of Spufford, Charlton (Spufford, 1979 and 1997; Charlton, 1994), and other scholars, that for most of the seventeenth century teaching elementary reading was a matter of imposing rote learning. Early training in reading literacy depended heavily on oral repetition of horn books and primers. It is not surprising, therefore, that Charlton has found countless examples of children learning to read by rote (Charlton, 1994). Spufford remarks, concerning a blind teacher of reading in the late seventeenth century, ‘If reading could be taught by the blind, the role of memorisation and rote-learning must have been very great indeed’ (Spufford, 1979, p. 426). Memorization was equally ubiquitous in university education. Fox-Bourne’s biography of Locke gives an account of university education in the mid-seventeenth century as relying heavily on memorization (Fox-Bourne, 1876, vol. 1, pp. 30–54). But memorization was not just valued as an educational tool; it was considered essential to the pursuit of wisdom and piety. That had been evident in the humanist practice of commonplacing, a practice still current in certain circles, often Nonconformist or with Puritan affinities, at the end of the seventeenth century. In 1691, for example, was published Lord Fairfax’s advice to his son: Read seriously what ever is before you, and reduce and digest it to Practice and Observation, otherwise you’ll have Sysiphus his labour, to be always revolving Sheets and Books at every new Occurence, which may require the Oracle of your reading. Trust not to your Memory but put all remarkable and notable things that shall in your reading occur to you, sub salva Custodia of Pen and Ink, but so alter the property by your own Scholia and Annotations on it, that your memory may speedily recur to the place it was committed to. (Fairfax, 1691, pp. 30–2)

An anonymous father whose advice was published in 1688 concurs: ‘Let not thy Books be many, but of the best. Thou art never the worse Scholar,

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 31

if thy Library lay in thy head. Thou hast no more Learning than what thou carriest about thee, that which lies by, is the Authors, not thine. If Books would make a Scholar, the Bookseller might bear the Bell’ (Anonymous, 1688, p. 16). The son is advised that it is better to have fewer books which have been memorized than many books which have not: ‘Thou art never the worse Scholar, if thy Library lay in thy head.’ Among the godly of all social classes, memorization was an exercise in piety. Sermons, for example, were widely memorized by both men and women and by all classes. The practice is illustrated in the Presbyterian minister Oliver Heywood’s account of his mother’s attempts to memorize sermons from the notes she had kept. Heywood recalls that it was ‘her constant course in the night when she lay waking to roll them in her mind, and rivet them there’ (quoted in Spufford, 1981, p. 35). Ralph Thoresby, the Yorkshire antiquarian whose writing is analysed in subsequent chapters, was another Presbyterian who memorized sermons. He admired people who were accomplished at repeating sermons word for word, having put them together from notes they had taken (see, for example, Thoresby’s diary entry for 18 October 1696, and his account of a talented memorizer of sermons in his topography of Leeds: RLC MS NKS 2935, p. 177; Thoresby, 1715, p. 612). Memorizing passages of the Bible was another activity the godly of all social classes engaged in. Seventeenth-century spiritual biographies often record moments in which phrases from the Bible ‘came into the mind’ of the writer (see Findlay, 2002, pp. 117–18). Their appearance was a result of constant memorization of texts from what was often the only book in the household. Bunyan, for example, whose household was almost entirely without books, describes the involuntary appearance of biblical verses in his mind: ‘Wife, said I, is there ever such a Scripture, I must go to Jesus? she said she could not tell; therefore I sat musing still to see if I could remember such a place, I had not sat above two or three minutes, but that came bolting in upon me, And to an innumerable company of Angels; and withall Hebrews the twelfth about the mount Zion was set before mine eyes’ (Bunyan, 1666, p. 75). The School of Piety of 1687 (fourth edition) advises parents to teach children to read as soon as they can manage it, so that they can start memorizing key verses of the Bible: ‘When they are not at School, or otherwise necessarily busied call upon them to read and repeat Scripture Proofs’ (quoted in Spufford, 1981, pp. 211–12). Memorizing biblical passages was also common among the pious middle and upper classes, as Gillespie has shown in his study of Bible reading in seventeenth-century Ireland (Gillespie, 1999).

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The poor, who could borrow texts more often than they could own them, may have memorized texts for pleasure rather than improvement. Among the French lower classes, chapbooks were memorized, as this account from an eighteenth-century lawyer suggests: ‘They have a mania for going back over these miserable books twenty times, and when they talk with you about them (which they do eagerly), they recite their little books word for word, so to speak’ (quoted in Chartier, 1988, pp. 163–4). Local performers of entertaining texts in England were also expert in memorization (see Fox, 2000, p. 5). The need to memorize explains the persistence of verse narrative in chapbook romances and ballads: sound patterns, such as rhyming and alliteration, are a major aid to memorization (Rubin, 1995). The seventeenth-century background to reading in all social classes, for both men and women, and at all levels of competence, then, was one of memorization. For many among the poor, memorization was an essential tool owing to the scarcity of books, or to lack of access to the means of acquiring more than elementary reading literacy. For the better off, memorization was an aid to wisdom, and among the godly, even at the end of the century, a requirement of piety. Woolley and especially Locke, however, show that for some of the better off who were less influenced by Puritanism, the end of the century offered more opportunities to separate reading from memorization. The extracts from Woolley quoted above show that she encouraged engaged reading, reading through a range of texts without supervision and without expectation that the governess need always test the child’s knowledge of the texts that had been read. This approach opens the door to reading without memorizing, as does Locke’s command to let children read as they wish without supervision. Indeed, Locke is explicit in his recommendation that reading be separated from memorization at least some of the time. He criticizes ‘a Fault in the ordinary Method of Education, and that is, The Charging of Children’s Memories’ (Locke, 1693, p. 63). His criticism is partly related to his argument that elementary reading literacy should be distinguished from rote learning (the implication is that this was not usually the case): ‘But learning by heart, and learning to read, should not I think be mixed, and so one made to dog the other’ (p. 185). But he also condemns the emphasis on memorization in grammar schools and universities in the teaching of second languages: Languages are to be learnt only by reading and talking, and not by scraps of authors got by heart … Indeed, where a passage comes in the way, whose

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 33 matter is worth remembrance, and the expression of it very close and excellent (as there are many such in the ancient authors), it may not be amiss to lodge it in the minds of young scholars, and with such admirable strokes of those great masters as sometimes exercise the memory of schoolboys. But their learning of their lessons by heart, as they happen to fall out in their books, without choice or distinction, I know not what it serves for but to misspend their time and pains, and give them a disgust and aversion for their books, wherein they find nothing but useless trouble. (Locke, 1693, p. 175)

Here, memorization is associated with ‘disgust and aversion for their books,’ with the implication, once again, that Locke approves of engaged reading, unsupervised reading motivated by the child’s tastes and not the teacher’s direction.

Reading for Pleasure I have suggested that an increasing number of late-seventeenth-century parents had the means to buy their children a wider range of texts than had previously been possible. They were also encouraged by at least some advisers to ignore the advice of their own parents, and of the godly, that reading should always involve memorization, and instead give their children a degree of freedom to read according to taste and without supervision. As well as being freed, at least sometimes, from the pious emphasis on memorization, they were also freed to some extent from traditional pious objections to reading for pleasure. Charlton has shown that there was strong opposition among the learned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to ‘vernacular fictional literature,’ which was considered to be corrupting (Charlton, 1987). This opposition, however, had met with vigorous counterarguments from writers like William Painter in 1566, who claimed that ‘these histories (which by another terme I call Novelles)’ offered good examples in the form of virtuous characters (Charlton, 1987, p. 455). Female readers and writers of the seventeenth century such as Mary Rich and Elizabeth Delaval acknowledged a taste for reading romances and plays for pleasure, but lamented the loss of time which could have been spent on pious exercises (p. 467). Their lamentations were supported by a wide range of godly writers. When Lord Fairfax, a lifelong sympathizer with Calvinist ideas, advised his son to buy and read books, he assumed that the aim of reading was improvement, not recreation:

34 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

‘Think no Cost too much in purchasing rare Books, which I esteem next to acquiring good Friends; but buy them not to lay by, or to grace your Library with the name of such a MS. or such a singular Piece, but read, revolve him, and lay him up in your memory, where he will be far the better Ornament’ (Fairfax, 1691, pp. 30–2). Fairfax discusses reading only as a form of useful study. There is no mention of recreational reading, of reading a book once, for the story, and then laying it aside to move on to the next one. Buying books for any purpose other than serious study and moral profit is discouraged. Elsewhere in his work of advice, Fairfax does not bar the recreational enjoyment of stories, but he makes no suggestion that these stories are to be read from books. On the contrary, his discussion of telling stories as a pastime is included in his section on conversation: ‘The most innocent, graceful and universal Discourse, is telling Stories, and Modern rather than Ancient; some I have known so excellent in this, as to parallel any case by some piece of History. This if well done, is a very great Perfection of Eloquence and Judgment, and will render your Company grateful and desirable, by Persons of Sense and Learning’ (p. 127). The anonymous 1688 Advice of a Father also assumes an equivalence between reading and studying, and an opposition between reading and recreation. The author commands his son to buy and memorize books, and also insists, ‘Make not Recreation thy business’ (Anonymous, 1688, p. 5). Pious diarists separate reading from recreation, implying that they read only for improvement. Ralph Thoresby, for example, is emphatic in his condemnation of recreation. In his diary, he frequently laments wasting his time on recreation, and describes idle conversation, for example, as ‘dry drunkenness.’ Reading, however, is never mentioned with condemnation, and is always of either spiritual or antiquarian texts (Thoresby considered his antiquarian labours to be worthy of God’s approval). The suggestion is that Thoresby rarely, if ever, read only for recreation. Another Presbyterian, James Creswick, also assumes that reading and recreation are mutually exclusive in his Advice to an Only Child (1693): ‘I have read a Story of a certain Gentlewoman, who used to spend much time in playing at Cards, and such Games, coming once from that Pastime late in the night, and finding her Waiting-Maid reading a good Book, cast her Eyes over the Maids shoulder, and spake words to this effect; Thou poor melancholy Soul, what, always reading and spending thy time in this manner? wilt thou take no comfort in thy life?’ (Creswick, 1693, p. 91). Creswick condemns ‘idle’ reading more directly elsewhere in the book: ‘Avoid all such occasions whatsoever as are expensive of

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 35

much time to no good purpose; as vain trickings and trimmings, tirings and dressings, too long needless visits, perusal of idle Books, or Treatises of vanity and folly, vain thoughts, fruitless discourse, unnecessary sleep, useless Recreations, and idle Games’ (p. 89). He explicitly opposes recreation and the reading of ‘idle’ books, to improvement and the reading of ‘good’ books. It was not only the godly who feared the effects of reading recreational fiction. A number of learned writers, including Boyle, believed that reading the wrong kind of text could cause permanent damage to the brain’s physiology (Johns, 1996). In other words, the promiscuous reading of the engaged reader could be harmful to the mind as well as to the soul. The godly of all social classes, then, as well as many of the learned, were strongly inclined to avoid reading for pleasure in the seventeenth century. Hannah Woolley, on the other hand, tells governesses that they can encourage reading for pleasure in their charges; she uses the argument cited by Charlton from the sixteenth century, that romances illustrate exemplary characters: Some imagine that Books are Womens Academies, wherein they learn to do evil with greater subtilty and cunning … … Some may imagine, that to read Romances after such practical Books of Divinity, will not only be a vain thing, but will absolutely overthrow that fabrick I endeavoured to erect: I am of a contrary opinion, and do believe such Romances which treat of Generosity, Gallantry, and Virtue, as Cassandra, Clelia, Grand Cyrus, Cleopatra, Parthenissa, nor omitting Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, are Books altogether worthy of their Observation. There are few Ladies mentione’d therein, but are character’d what they ought to be; the magnanimity, virtue, gallantry, patience, constancy, and courage of the men, might intitle them worthy Husbands to the most deserving of the female sex. (Woolley, 1675, pp. 8–9)

Woolley is by no means irreligious; nor does she marginalize pious reading. She is also anxious that young ladies be protected from obscene or blasphemous reading: Having thus proved, That the reading Books doth much conduce to the improving the understanding of young Gentlewomen, it behoveth the Governess to be careful in her choice of them. In the first place let them read some choice pieces of Piety, which may inflame their hearts with the love of

36 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator God, and kindle in them ardent desires to be early followers of the Doctrine of Christ Jesus. Let there be a strict watch to keep unviolated the two gates of the Soul, the Ears and Eyes; let the last be imployed on good and proper Subjects, and there will be the less fear that the Ears should be surpriz’d by the converse of such who delight in wanton and obscene discourses, which too often do pleasantly and privately insinuate themselves into the Ear, carrying with them that unwholesome air which infects and poysons the purity of the Soul. I know it will be expected what sort of Books of Piety, I would recommend to the perusal of these Gentlewomen; London affords such plenty of them, I know not which to pitch on. Not to trouble you with too many, take these which follow: Bishop Ushers Body of Divinity. Mr. Swinnocks Christiancalling. Mr. Firmins Real Christian. Mr. James Janeways book, Intituled, Acquaintance with God betimes; and his Token for Children when they are young. (p. 8)

What distinguishes Woolley from Presbyterian writers like Heywood and Creswick is her idea that reading for pleasure need not be sinful, even where the text has no explicitly pious content. Her recommendation of recreation in general and recreational reading in particular is repeated later in the book: ‘Recreations which are most proper and suitable to Ladies, may be rankt under four principal heads, Musick, Dancing, Limning and Reading’ (p. 83). She offered the families who could afford governesses a view of reading which resisted the strong opposition to recreational reading on the part of the godly, without appearing to recommend something impious or scandalous. Having established that they were reading nothing blasphemous or licentious, her work insisted that young ladies could be allowed to read widely, without supervision or subsequent examination, and for pleasure; in other words, they could be permitted and enabled to become engaged readers. In this respect, her work anticipated Locke’s treatise, and his recommendation of unsupervised reading for pleasure among the children of the wealthy.

Reading Aloud The quotation from Meek earlier in this chapter implies that habitual silent reading is a matter not just of preference but of skill and experience. It takes several years of engaged reading, Meek suggests, before a child will spontaneously start to read silently. It is impossible to tell how

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 37

much reading from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was silent (Saenger has written illuminatingly of silent reading in the Middle Ages; Saenger, 1997). To begin with, there was no simple distinction between ‘reading aloud’ and ‘reading silently.’ Reading aloud encompassed such diverse activities as declamatory performance, reading a news-sheet in a tavern, articulating words to oneself in solitude, and reading to a spouse in a private room. What is clear is that reading aloud was ubiquitous in the seventeenth century among all classes and in all contexts. Indeed, for centuries, the word ‘aloud’ was not needed to indicate that reading meant speaking: the OED gives ‘to utter aloud (the words or sentences indicated by the writing etc., under inspection)’ as one of the primary meanings of the verb ‘to read’. Fox has suggested that reading aloud was the normal mode of reading for many, if not most, early modern English men and women (Fox, 2000, p. 37). He also cites work by Ong arguing that Tudor prose, in style, punctuation, and format, was designed to be read aloud (Ong, 1965). Spufford quotes from the autobiography of Arise Evans, who describes reading as a skill which can be witnessed by others in action rather than tested after the event by questions: ‘It was not long before I attained to reade English perfectly, to the admiration of all that heard me’ (quoted in Spufford, 1979, p. 421). The teaching of elementary literacy was based heavily on recitation. Even texts which concentrated on spelling, a matter to which a reader’s listeners would be indifferent and which was more relevant to silent reading, reveal that education was conducted by oral exchange and not by silent study. Owen Price’s The Vocal Organ of 1665, which claimed to be ‘A new Art of teaching the English Orthographie,’ consists largely of doggerel rhymes to be learned by heart as an aid to learning to read. In his English Orthographie of 1668 (reprinted in 1670), Price recommends a question-and-answer method of learning spelling and punctuation. Reading aloud is still important in elementary teaching today. But in the seventeenth century, skill in reading aloud was also central in grammar school and university education. The teaching of rhetoric was to a considerable extent the teaching of reading aloud, and those who had been to grammar school or university were deeply versed in reading to a master, in reading as a performance. The identification between teaching reading and teaching declamation is illustrated by an early-eighteenth-century diarist’s remark on his own preaching skills: ‘Preached at Whickham, was pretty well heard – called it a noble

38 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

beginning. Uncle Robert took a great deal of pains to teach me to read well – and as it were musically – by notes’ (John Thomlinson, quoted in Weatherill, 1996, p. 162). The same oral teaching methods were used even by tutors teaching individual students in private houses. After leaving grammar school, Richard Baxter was disappointed to be sent to a private tutor rather than to university. Baxter’s main complaint about this first tutor was that he did not read aloud to him, but simply left him alone with books: ‘He never read to me, nor used any savoury discourse of godliness; only he loved me and allowed me books and time enough’ (Baxter, 1974, p. 7). Baxter was glad to move on to another tutor more diligent in reading aloud to him: ‘After that old Mr. Francis Garbett (the faithful, learned minister at Wroxeter) for about a month read logic to me, and provoked me to a closer course of study … And by that means all that I read did stick the better in my memory’ (pp. 8–9). In wealthy families like Lord Fairfax’s, it was not unheard of that a scholar was retained expressly to read aloud to his employer: ‘Keep always an able Scholar for the Languages in your house, besides your Chaplain, who may be ready at hand to read to you out of any Book your fancy or judgment shall for the present pitch upon, him you’ll find to be of singular use and advantage to you, and you ought therefore to give him Salary accordingly’ (Fairfax, 1691, p. 30). Recreational and social settings also encouraged reading aloud rather than silently. In his condemnation of sinful books, Baxter talks of ‘the reading or hearing of false and tempting Books.’ The imagined context for such books certainly includes verbal performance of them to listeners, and it is possible that ‘the reading’ might only mean reading them to others (Baxter, 1675, p. 157). Baxter also writes of being ‘bewitched’ by romances. ‘Bewitched’ was not always a metaphorical expression in the period, and it is not unlikely that a performer, rather than the texts alone, was seen as doing the ‘bewitching.’ For women, who were excluded from grammar schools and universities, reading aloud was a valuable social art which they took pains to learn well. In her account of her own education as a lady’s servant, Hannah Woolley says that the most important element was learning to read aloud well: ‘But that which most of all increast my knowledg was my daily reading to my Lady, Poems of all sorts and Plays, teaching me as I read, where to place my accents, how to raise and fall my voice, where lay the Emphasis of the expressions’ (Woolley, 1675, p. 12).

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 39

Among the poor, reading aloud was a way to maximize the value of each text. A poor man like Bunyan saw reading as a communal activity, in this instance shared with his wife: ‘In these two Books, I should sometimes read with her, wherein I also found some things that were somewhat pleasing to me’ (Bunyan, 1666, p. 4). In all social settings, in all social classes, and for both men and women, then, reading tended to mean reading to someone or some group. Many would not have had the chance to read frequently and widely enough to acquire the skill of silent reading. Of those who were able to read silently as a matter of course, the traditional contexts for reading did not always encourage silence. The solitary and unsupervised nature of the reading which Locke and Woolley encouraged in children, therefore, gave them not only the chance to acquire the skill of fluent silent reading, but also the leisure and privacy to use that skill. The many kinds of reading aloud – that from the pulpit, that in the salon, that across a tavern table – by no means declined in the eighteenth century (see, for example, Tadmor, 1996; Raven, 1996, pp. 199–200). But in the late seventeenth century a growing number of middle- and upperclass children had the opportunity to acquire improved skills as silent readers through prolonged engaged reading, and also the opportunity to use those skills.

Children’s Reading In his work on education, Locke regretted the scarcity of reading material for seventeenth-century children (Locke, 1693, p. 186), but by the time his book was published in 1693 this state of affairs was changing. Roger L’Estrange’s expensive folio version of Aesop, the first to be directed primarily at children, had been printed the previous year. L’Estrange’s preface, explaining the need for his edition by referring to his distaste for rote learning among children, echoes Locke’s views on the subject: ‘This Rhapsody of Fables is a Book universally read, and taught in all our schools; but almost at such a Rate as we teach Pyes and Parrots, that pronounce the words without so much as guessing at the meaning of them’ (quoted in Whitley, 1997, pp. 72–3). The late seventeenth century has been described as the period in which children’s literature was born (OCEL). The first books directed specifically at children, among them Benjamin Harris’s Protestant Tutor and Benjamin Keach’s War with the Devil, appeared in the 1670s

40 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

(OCCL). In 1694, ‘J.G.’ brought out A Play-book for children to allure them to read as soon as possible, which had typeface, margins, and language suitable for children (quoted in Plumb, 1975, p. 81; cited in Waller, 2000, p. 68). And although there is little sign of a substantial market for children’s books until the early eighteenth century, Rousseau has pointed out that children’s science books, for example, were more widely available in the eighteenth century than has often been stated (Rousseau, 1982). There is also evidence that many books which do not specifically mention children in their titles were available to, and increasingly associated with, children at the end of the seventeenth century. Some of this evidence comes from chapbooks. When Locke recommended ‘Some easy pleasant Book’ for the elementary reader, the example he gave of a suitable text for children was Reynard the Fox. This story existed in a number of chapbook editions of the 1680s and 1690s, and there is evidence that Locke was not alone in assigning chapbook entertainments to upper-class children. Chapbooks were seen as material for the poor (Spufford, 1981, p. 50), so Locke’s choice of a chapbook for an upper-class boy suggests that children of higher rank and the adult poor were considered to have the same tastes in fiction. One edition of Reynard the Fox was bound with other tales of the kind by Anthony Wood, the Oxford historian and a contemporary of Locke’s. Wood’s collection includes a seventeenth-century story now considered a children’s classic, Tom Thumb (Anonymous, 1670; Bod Printed Books, Wood 259). Its final stanza suggests that such tales were becoming specialized to children, rustics, and women, by noting that Tom’s ‘fame lives here in England still, / amongst the Countrey sort, / Of whom our wives and children small, / tell tales of pleasant sport.’ This connection between what was read by children of all backgrounds, and the cheap literature directed especially at women and country people is evident in the book trade in the second half of the eighteenth century: ‘The market for children’s books became more distinct, and both in London and in the provinces dealers emerged who specialized in such material. This market overlapped that of chapbooks, song sheets, and other cheap printed material intended for the semi-literate’ (Belanger, 1982, p. 20). In his condemnation of idle reading, quoted from earlier, Baxter suggests that children were particularly likely to have a chapbook ‘in their hands’: ‘Such as are Romances, and other feigned histories of that nature, with Books of tales, and jests, and foolish complements, with which the world so much aboundeth, that there’s few but may have admittance to this Library of the Devil. Abundance of old feigned

Income, Ideology, and Childhood Reading 41

Stories, and new Romances are in the hands, especially of Children, and idle Gentlemen, & filthy lustful Gallants’ (Baxter, 1675, p. 157). Baxter mentions three groups who might own chapbooks rather than simply hear them read aloud: wealthy men with time and leisure, fashionable young men, and children. The connection between wealth and childhood reading of chapbooks reinforces the impression left by Woolley and Locke that the families of the upper classes could afford to give books to children for their own entertainment, and that the practice was leading to the development of a specialized literature for children.

The Engaged Child Reader The Tatler contains an account of engaged reading by a middle-class child at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Bickerstaffe is paying a visit to his seven-year-old godson’s family: I found, upon Conversation with him, tho’ he was a little noisy in his Mirth, that the Child had excellent Parts, and was a great Master of all the Learning on t’other Side Eight Years old. I perceived him a very great Historian in Aesop’s Fables; but he frankly declared to me his Mind, That he did not delight in that Learning, because he did not believe they were true; for which Reason, I found he had very much turned his Studies for about a Twelvemonth past, into the Lives and Adventures of Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, the Seven Champions, and other Historians of that Age … He would tell you the Mismanagements of John Hickathrift, find Fault with the passionate Temper in Bevis of Southampton, and love St. George for being the Champion of England; and by this Means, had his Thoughts insensibly moulded into the Notions of Discretion, Virtue, and Honour. I was extolling his Accomplishments, when the Mother told me, That the little Girl who led me in this Morning, was in her Way a better Scholar than he. Betty (says she) deals chiefly in Fairies and Sprights; and sometimes in a Winter Night, will terrify the Maids with her Accounts, till they are afraid to go up to Bed. (Bond, 1987, vol. 2, pp. 92–3)

The narrative is revealing in a number of ways. By seven years old, this middle-class child has read widely not only in cheap chapbooks (Guy of Warwick and the Seven Champions) but also in a much longer and more expensive romance. Bond’s note reports that Don Bellianis of Greece ‘was the subtitle of a much longer romance, The Honour of Chivalry: or, The Famous and Delectable History of Don Bellianis of Greece … An edition was

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published as late as 1703 … in two quarto volumes of nearly 400 pages’ (p. 93). At the age of seven, therefore, the child has access to a wide range of texts, including an expensive romance in two large quartos. Such access could by no means be universal. Yet among The Tatler’s readership this family is not, it seems, considered remarkably wealthy. The child reads widely, enthusiastically, and for pleasure, and makes his own choices about what to read, turning from Aesop because he considers the fables untrue. He is permitted to read texts which many in the seventeenth and even in the eighteenth century considered sinful and even harmful. Moreover, he has his father’s approval for reading widely and freely in material of this kind: ‘I could not but observe the Satisfaction the Father took in the Forwardness of his Son’ (p. 92). In every respect, then, the boy fulfils the OECD requirements for engaged reading: he reads for pleasure, he spends time reading a variety of material, he is highly motivated to read and is interested in reading. A combination of wealth, leisure, and changing attitudes to education and reading had given him, and other children of Tatler readers, the chance to achieve reading skills which those who were poorer or whose ideas on education and reading were different would find more difficult. The description of the boy’s sister as an even ‘better scholar’ is telling. Instead of the female servants of the house entrancing her with their stock of oral folk tales, it is she who can terrify the maids thanks to her wide reading in fairy tales.

2

Pausing for Effect

In this chapter, I contrast writing for a reader as a speaker and writing for a reader as a hearer with reference to punctuation. I analyse punctuation in terms of pausing, and draw on a series of early modern linguistic guidebooks to provide evidence that whereas punctuation marks were and are subject to widely varied interpretations of their meaning, there is a consistent interpretation of their function in terms of length of pause. I account for changes in punctuation use in the period with reference to the complex implications of pausing in speech, which I contrast with the more straightforward implications of pausing for a reader as a hearer. My argument that the changes reflect a change from a model of the reader as a speaker to a model of the reader as a hearer is supported by evidence concerning the practice of correcting punctuation in printing houses. The greater part of the chapter is devoted to a detailed discussion of the relation between punctuation in print and punctuation in manuscript in the writings of Joseph Addison and Ralph Thoresby. Addison’s patterns of editing his own manuscripts show a tendency to increase the number and length of pauses which is consistent with a model of the reader as a hearer. Thoresby is conscious of the changes made by others to his manuscripts before they are printed, and anxious to conform to his editor’s practices – as evident in his adoption of the editor’s capitalization and use of italic type. But he is less successful in his attempts to adopt his contemporaries’ approach to punctuation, because the model dictating his punctuation is that of the reader as a speaker. This more traditional model places constraints on his use of pauses which are not imposed on a writer whose model is of the reader as a hearer. The relevant section of the chapter involves detailed textual comparisons and some numerical analyses of capitalization and punctuation in Thoresby’s texts.

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Until recently, punctuation has been a comparatively neglected area of both language study and literary criticism. Critical editors of literary texts rarely offer more than a few words about punctuation and feel little need to apologize for changing it. In their 1997 edition of Defoe’s True-Born Englishman and Other Writings, for example, Furbank and Owens write: ‘We have retained as much of the original punctuation as we could, altering it only where it was obviously wrong … His long, improvisatory sentence-paragraphs, full of interpolations and clauses branching off in unexpected new directions, use colons and semi-colons to mark what are essentially new thoughts, though ones related to what has gone before, and we think that to replace these with full stops does a definite, if subtle, injury to the rhythm and movement of the prose’ (Defoe, 1997, p. xxix). What is interesting here is that the editors apologize for not changing the punctuation, and are confident of their ability to assess and correct what is ‘obviously wrong.’ It is hard to imagine the same editorial approach being accepted with respect, say, to choice of diction. My object is not so much to criticize the excellent editorial work of recent decades (including that of Furbank and Owens) as to point to an assumption that punctuation – unlike words – has no fixed or permanent importance; it can be altered without threatening or diminishing the authenticity of the text. A comparable lack of attention to punctuation is found among many historians of language and experimental linguists. Both groups of scholars have been content to use a fairly unsophisticated set of assumptions and definitions when discussing the form and function of punctuation marks. Writing of linguists, Hill and Murray point out that ‘the nearabsence of research into punctuation is oddly conspicuous to say the least: in linguistics, work on punctuation is almost negligible … In psycholinguistics, conclusions about the effect of punctuation on sentence comprehension appear to be largely intuitive and undocumented’ (Hill and Murray, 2000, p. 566). Certain historians of language and literature have shown more interest in punctuation, but to some extent have been hampered by inadequate definition of the terms describing punctuation. Perhaps the most distinguished study is that of Parkes (1992), whose impressively learned and detailed history of punctuation in the West has a far wider scope than the valuable studies by Treip (1970) of Milton’s punctuation and Partridge (1964) of Shakespeare’s. More recently, the contributors to a volume entitled Ma(r)king the Text (Bray et al., eds, 2000) have used careful attention to punctuation to illuminate literary history in the seventeenth and

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eighteenth centuries. There is still a tendency in these historical studies, however, to rely on certain unexamined assumptions about what punctuation is and how it works. In particular, an assumption persists that ‘syntactic’ uses of punctuation marks can be distinguished from ‘temporal’ uses – that is, that the use of punctuation to indicate syntactic (or grammatical) relationships among items in a text can be separated from its use to indicate pauses. In his discussion of a twentieth-century edition of Bacon, Parkes notes that its editor ‘prefers a grammatical analysis, and divides the period into two sentences. However, in so doing he destroys the logical and rhetorical balance of the original’ (Parkes, 1992, p. 89). Here Parkes assumes a distinction between a ‘grammatical analysis’ of the passage and a ‘logical and rhetorical’ analysis. A rhetorical analysis, he implies, sees punctuation as marking pauses, whereas a grammatical analysis sees punctuation as marking syntactic relationships. Partridge describes the history of the colon in terms of its shift from having a temporal meaning (that is, from marking a pause) in the sixteenth century to having a logical meaning in the nineteenth century (Partridge, 1964, p. 193). Treip also assumes a distinction between a grammatical function for punctuation marks and an older temporal function (the inconsistency between Parkes’s use of ‘logical’ and Treip’s in the following quotation itself reveals the underlying conceptual confusion in the field): ‘The punctuation in the earlier text of Milton’s poem is dramatically and rhythmically founded, but in the later text it seems to have been partly modified and made a little more grammatical, according to the newer, prevailingly logical system’ (Treip, 1970, p. 16). More recently, Crystal, arguing for a distinction between the older use of a dot to mark a pause and its current use to mark the end of a sentence, has warned presentday readers to be careful when reading medieval pointing: ‘Over thirty marks – various combinations of dots, curls, and dashes – can be found in medieval manuscripts, most of which disappeared after the arrival of printing. Some of them look like modern marks, but their function was not the same: a point, for example, represented a pause, rather than a sentence ending, and the height of the point could vary to express degrees of pause’ (Crystal, 2004, p. 261). In these historical studies of punctuation, then, there is an assumption that syntactic use of punctuation can be distinguished from temporal use. But recent linguistic research suggests that distinguishing between these two functions of punctuation marks may be mistaken. There is evidence that ‘pausing’ is not an alternative to processing syntax but an aid. Fodor has written of the importance of prosody (features of language

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such as tempo and intonation, including prosodic breaks, or pauses) in processing syntax, even during silent reading. Her evidence is presented in support of the ‘Implicit Prosody Hypothesis’ (IPH) that ‘in silent reading, a default prosodic contour is projected onto the stimulus, and it may influence syntactic ambiguity resolution’ (Fodor, 2002a, p. 1). That is, silent readers ‘project’ sound qualities onto the words they are reading, and their doing so may affect the way they resolve syntactic ambiguities. Fodor and her colleagues offer prosodic breaks or pauses as an example in support of their case (p. 4): there is evidence that pauses are used even by silent readers to analyse syntactic relationships among items in an utterance. The suggestion that it may be impossible to talk of a distinction between punctuation which marks pauses and punctuation which marks syntactic relationships is supported by the work of Hill and Murray. In a study of eye movements in silent readers, they found that ‘gaze duration’ (the period spent reading a word for the first time) was longer ‘when the words were followed by a comma rather than unpunctuated, irrespective of structure’ (Hill and Murray, 2000, p. 577). They also found that commas were useful in syntactic comprehension and helped readers process some difficult sentence structures (p. 573). In other words, commas aided syntactic processing because they created pauses, even in silent reading. The implication is that it may not be possible to insist on a distinction between a syntactic function for punctuation marks and a temporal function. In the light of these findings, I want to venture some qualifications of the historical account of punctuation offered by Parkes, Treip, Partridge, and others. The history of punctuation practice is often described as involving a change in emphasis from a temporal to a syntactic function for punctuation marks (see, for example, Parkes, 1992, pp. 88–9; Partridge, 1964, p. 193; Treip, 1970, pp. x, 16), but the linguistic research cited above suggests that this account may be based on an untenable distinction between the two functions. The account I am proposing for some of the changes in punctuation practice in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries assumes a change in the dominant reading model from one of the reader as a speaker to one of the reader as a hearer. Starting from this assumption, I am proposing that there is continuity of function in punctuation marks throughout the period. The marks continue to indicate pauses of varying lengths, and the hierarchy of marks with respect to length of pause remains stable. What changes is that constraints on pauses for the reader as a speaker are replaced by constraints on pauses for the reader as a hearer.

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Pauses are silences of varying lengths, from short prosodic breaks to lengthy breaks between separate sections of an utterance. In spoken discourse, such silences are subject to a wide variety of interpretations. The interpretations are heavily dependent on the immediate context of the utterance as well as on the wider culture in which the utterance is made. For example, it has been said that if the question ‘Will you marry me?’ is asked in English, a response of silence is interpreted as a refusal. (When Jane Austen’s Mr Knightley proposes to Emma, for example, he is at first discouraged by her silence; Austen, 1985.) In Japanese, however, a silent response to this question is taken as acceptance (Crystal, 1987, p. 172). Short silences in conversation, even of a few microseconds, can be interpreted as, among other things, invitations to take a turn as speaker (Jaworski, 1993, pp. 16–17). Silence can also indicate a wide range of communication intentions such as assent, offence, and shyness (pp. 3–6). In his discussion of tone units in reading aloud, Brazil suggests a variety of reasons for the use of short silences, including reader hesitation during ‘the complex task of decoding’; ‘a temporary departure from an otherwise hearer-sensitive stance in order to allow the reader to focus upon some matter of linguistic interpretation which is currently creating a problem’; ‘a marking of the matter of reading as not an attempted dramatization of a situated and person-to-person communication’; and ‘ritualized’ reading (Brazil, 1992, pp. 214–15). The rich range of interpretations available for silences in speech has been exploited by playwrights such as Beckett and Pinter. Silences of all lengths, therefore, are subject to many different responses and interpretations by hearers. When a silent reader as a hearer is re-creating the pauses (indicated by commas) made by a notional writer (as described in Hill and Murray, 2000), there is little likelihood that the pauses will be misinterpreted. The reader as a hearer is in control of the notional writer’s silent ‘voice,’ so can be in no doubt as to whether the reader is pausing because of ‘the complex task of decoding’ or to mark a ‘disengaged stance.’ But a listener who hears someone read aloud could interpret the pauses created by punctuation marks in a number of potentially incorrect ways. A culture in which texts are routinely assumed to be read aloud rather than read silently might therefore use punctuation differently from a culture in which silent reading is the norm. Silence in spoken language, then, cannot be assumed to be neutral. It is frequently subject to interpretation and can evoke powerful responses in, and even action from, listeners. This characteristic has important consequences for a writer who conceives of his or her reader as a

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speaker. The writer may wish to introduce pauses in order to reduce syntactic ambiguity. But these pauses are subject to interpretation by the third-party hearer(s). The third-party hearer(s) may interpret the reader’s silence as an invitation to interrupt, or as a signal of uncertainty, or reverence, or anger, and so on, and the writer may well wish to avoid such interpretations. The writer is therefore constrained in his or her use of pauses. But a writer who conceives of the reader as a hearer rather than as a speaker is less constrained. First, if the reader is conceived of as a hearer, then there are only two possible parties to the utterance – the notional writer and the reader. So the number of possible interpretations of silence is limited – for example, in an address to a single person, silence cannot be interpreted as a failure of nerve before a large crowd, or as an invitation to a group of listeners to take turns speaking. Second, one of the two participants – the reader – is entirely passive, and the writer is only a notional figure, not a real conversational partner. So some possible interpretations of silence in one-to-one conversation (for example, as indicating that offence has been taken) are ruled out in the relationship between silent reader and notional writer. In writing written for the reader as a hearer, therefore, there are far fewer possible interpretations of silence, and the writer can use silence more freely to clarify grammatical relationships between words. Changes in punctuation practice therefore need not involve changes in the function of punctuation marks, but instead could indicate changes in the distribution of pauses in texts. It is possible that punctuation marks continued to indicate pauses of various lengths, but that the uses of these pauses changed in keeping with a change in the model of the reader from a speaker to a hearer. In what follows, I illustrate this change using the test case of the comma. The teaching of comma use in guidebooks of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries suggests that whereas there was little agreement either at particular points in the era or throughout the period as a whole on the function of the comma, there was consistency on the length of the pause it implied. Moreover, there is evidence that the corrections respecting comma use in the printing houses were affected by a move towards silent reading. After a fairly wide ranging discussion of these general matters, I illustrate the changing nature of comma use at the turn to the eighteenth century with two detailed analyses of commas in a set of texts by Ralph Thoresby and Joseph Addison. These texts show an editorial trend towards use of a greater number of commas for the purpose of clarifying syntactic relationships, an increase made possible by the change in the

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model of reading. There is evidence that Thoresby strove to adopt ‘correct’ linguistic usage, but his punctuation implies that he did not share the model of reading as silent which lay behind the practice he aimed to imitate. Thoresby’s writings from the 1690s and early 1700s show a general reluctance to introduce long pauses into his writing, but by 1714 at least one of his texts shows that he is using more long pauses, in imitation of the changes made to his manuscripts in print. My discussion of Thoresby’s anxiety to adopt ‘correct’ linguistic practice includes an analysis of his use of capital letters and underscorings, which shows that he imitated printed forms in the area of orthography from an early stage, and a comparison of these signs of imitation with his practice in punctuation.

Linguistic Guidebooks from the 1580s to the 1740s Definitions of the function of punctuation marks found in guidebooks seem prone to instability, both in the present day and in earlier periods. Quirk and others (1985), for example, have observed that comma use is a matter of heated disagreement today, generated by conflicting advice on what commas are for and how they should be used. Language guides in earlier periods were not necessarily as passionately attached to their own practice as present-day prescriptivists, but a wide and often inconsistent range of advice nonetheless was available on how to interpret and use punctuation marks, or points. The following advice on commas is drawn from a selection of language guidebooks written between 1587 and 1748. For Francis Clement in 1587, the comma is ‘commonly put before the relative, which, who, that, whom, to whom’ (Clement, 1587, p. 25). Puttenham, writing in 1589, echoes Clement’s advice that a comma should be interpreted as a pause, but for him pausing is a question of metrical structure rather than syntax; he even uses ‘comma’ interchangeably with ‘cesure’ (Puttenham, 1589, p. 61). The seventeenth-century guidebooks continue to offer a disparate range of advice. In his Most Plain Directions for True-Writing of 1653, Richard Hodges uses commas to separate nouns in a list, as in ‘all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness’ (Hodges, 1653, p. 40). For Daines in 1640, however, commas are used ‘to make a kinde of Emphasis’ (Daines, 1640, p. 70). Later in the century, Guy Miege advises that a comma ‘sometimes serves to divide two Members of a Sentence, that have a near Coherency together,’ for example ‘I give you leave to go thither, but come back assoon [sic] as you can’

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(Miege, 1688, p. 122). Thomas Lye in 1671 recalls Hodges in his description of the comma as ‘distinguishing [a sentence’s] shorter Parts,’ but, unlike Hodges’s, his list of nouns contains conjunctions: ‘above all principality, and Power, and might, and Dominion’ (Lye, 1671, pp. 139–40). The anonymous author of A Treatise of Stops, Points, or Pauses agrees with Lye and uses the same example to illustrate the use of the comma: ‘Far abov all principality, and power, and might’ (Anonymous, 1680b, p. 3). For Joseph Aiken in 1693, on the other hand, ‘A Comma, is to be written betwixt words which depend on one another,’ as in the example ‘O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good’ (Aiken, 1693, p. 69). Cocker in 1696 takes a different view, giving as his example ‘Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true’ (Cocker, 1696, p. 95). Thus there were varying and sometimes conflicting definitions of the comma both within particular decades (such as the 1590s or the 1690s) and from one decade to another in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet in one important respect all these writers are in full agreement: the comma occupies a place in a hierarchy of pauses. In all twelve linguistic guidebooks, the following temporal values are assigned to punctuation marks: [.] is a longer pause than [:], which is a longer pause than [;], which is a longer pause than [,] (the semicolon was introduced in English printing in the 1580s and does not feature in books of the sixteenth century, but otherwise these books observe the same hierarchy as those of the seventeenth century). Two of the writers assign values to these differences in length and advise the reader to count ‘one’ for a comma, ‘two’ for a semicolon, and so on (Daines, 1640, p. 71; Anonymous, 1680b, p. 4). The same advice is found later among the eighteenth-century elocutionists. John Mason, for example, in An Essay on Elocution and Punctuation, writes, ‘A Comma stops the Voice while we may privately tell one, a Semi-colon two; a Colon three: and a Period four’ (Mason, 1748, p. 22). Parkes wisely suggests that guidebooks such as these should be used cautiously, since their authors, who tend to be conservative, often advise readers to persist in the practice of a previous era rather than giving a true account of current practice (Parkes, 1992). Yet respecting the hierarchy of pauses there is continuity of advice from the 1580s to the 1740s, surely too long a period for even the most conservative advisers to wish to preserve fossilized forms unrelated to actual usage. Partridge, meanwhile, is sceptical of what he calls ‘the time concept,’ saying that ‘the system was probably fallacious, but it persisted for many hundreds of years, and even now dies hard’ (Partridge, 1964, p. 187). But he offers no

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evidence that writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries hesitated to assign time values to punctuation marks. Indeed, the hierarchy of time values described above can still be heard in some Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. Choristers chanting the psalms prescribed for evensong by The Book of Common Prayer continue to observe the punctuation of the 1660 prayer book, with long breaks at the mid-line colons, shorter breaks at semicolons at the ends of lines, and still shorter breaks at commas: It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord: and to sing praises unto thy Name, O most Highest; To tell of thy loving-kindness early in the morning: and of thy truth in the night-season; (Psalm 92, verses 1 and 2, taken from The Book of Common Prayer) Take a good breath at the colon: a full beat or rhythmic foot of silence … The division of the Psalm-verse into two parts also suggests that a definite pause should be made at the colon, long enough to cause an observable cessation of vocal sound in the building, whatever its size. (A mental repetition of the last rhythmic foot has been suggested as a good measure of the pause.) (Briggs and Frere, 1969, pp. viii, xiii)

Seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century pointing is also observed in present-day recitations of texts like the Lord’s Prayer. This is the version of the prayer printed in 1708 as part of an anonymous father’s Advice to a Son in the University: Our Father, which art in Heaven; Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done in Earth, As it is in Heaven. Give us this day our Daily Bread. And forgive us our Trespasses, As we forgive them that Trespass against us. And lead us not into Temptation; But deliver us from Evil: For thine is the Kingdom, And the Power, And the Glory, for ever and ever. Amen. (Anonymous, 1708, p. 41)

The pauses indicated by commas, colons, semicolons, and full stops are re-created by lineation in the version printed in a children’s Bible published in 1964: Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.

52 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

(The Children’s Bible, 1976, p. 388)

Two conflicting patterns, then, are found in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century advice on punctuation marks: there is remarkable consistency as to the relative duration of the pauses signified by the marks, but considerable inconsistency as to where and how the marks should be employed. Since the guidebooks are consistent in saying that punctuation marks indicate pauses, their inconsistency in defining the marks’ function may reflect the variety and complexity of pausing in speech, where pauses can range from prosodic breaks for resolving ambiguity to rhetorical indications of deep emotion in oratory and turn-taking signals in conversation. I suggest that the varying interpretations of the comma, both now and then, are symptomatic of a folk linguistic belief that commas have a syntactic and/or semantic function which is independent of the pauses they produce. The early modern definitions of the comma in terms of time suggest that the marks did have a consistent function throughout the period – that of indicating a pause. But the marks themselves do not necessarily indicate how to interpret the pause. Changing practice at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, therefore, reflects changes in the way pauses were distributed rather than a change in the function of punctuation marks.

Punctuation in the Printing House The effect of a change in reading model on the distribution of pauses can be illustrated by turning to printing history and to the role of the corrector. The corrector’s task was to make sure that proofs matched manuscript copy. In his Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing of 1683, the printer Joseph Moxon recommended that the corrector be ‘very knowing in Derivations and Etymologies of Words, very sagacious in Pointing, skilful in the Compositers whole Task and Obligation, and endowed with a quick Eye to espy the smallest Fault’ (Moxon, 1962, p. 247). Moxon

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goes on to recommend that the corrector be assisted by a reader, someone to read copy aloud while the corrector listens and corrects proof. The corrector, then, worked not just from the eye but also from the ear. In his Orthotypographia, published in Leipzig in 1608, Hieronymus Hornsbuch also describes the functions of the reader and the corrector: ‘The corrector has to train himself, while the reading is going on, to anticipate the reader by at least one word of the text. In this way he will see and note in the margin a little before the reader overtakes him’ (quoted in Simpson, 1970, p. 136). At the university’s press in Oxford in the early eighteenth century, Thomas Hearne corrected as he listened to a boy reading, and Samuel Richardson employed a Peter Bishop to read aloud to the corrector (Simpson, 1970, p. 136). It is likely that any changes the corrector made to punctuation were based on what he heard rather than on what he saw on the page, or ‘heard’ internally as a silent reader. Crystal describes the process of correction in the early days of English printing: ‘In the typical checking process, a proof sheet was pulled from a forme and compared with the original manuscript by two people: a reader would read aloud the original and the corrector would follow the text on the proof. The process would pick up several errors, and the appropriate corrections would be made to the type in the forme. However, a two-person process, where one person’s dictating speed may not be the same as the other person’s receptive speed, is obviously fallible’ (Crystal, 2004, p. 237). In his admirably thorough Proof-reading in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries (1970), Simpson shows that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the preferred corrector was the author, although a learned substitute might be brought in from outside the printing house for a work in the ancient languages or if the author was absent. Printers sometimes had to persuade reluctant authors to come to the printing house to correct their texts (Simpson, 1970, pp. 7, 10, 35, 49, and elsewhere). In the early days, there was no suggestion that the corrector was a universal authority on all matters of pointing. But in the eighteenth century two potentially significant changes in the practice of correcting took place. The first is what was possibly a rise in prestige of the professional corrector, although the evidence for such a change can be assessed only tentatively. Simpson suggests that there was an increase in correctors’ fees from two shillings a sheet in 1697 to seven and then ten shillings or more in the eighteenth century (Simpson, 1970, p. 163). McKenzie’s arguments concerning the difficulty of interpreting economic statistics

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from print shops in the early modern period, however, make this evidence inconclusive (McKenzie, 1969). Perhaps more telling is the appearance of celebrity correctors, such as Alexander Cruden in the later period (Simpson, 1970, pp. 158–9). The evidence for the second change, in the correctors’ methods, is less vulnerable to a charge of oversimplification. By the 1730s, it seems, the best correctors were asking their readers to read copy aloud letter by letter and point by point (p. 159). The new practice suggests that the corrector had ceased to correct pointing errors by listening for the reader’s pauses. This letter from 1754 describes the practice with reference to ancient languages but recommends the same method for English texts: Two people must be concerned; the one must name every letter, capital, point, reference, accent, etc., that is, in English, must spell every part of every word distinctly, and note down every difference in a book prefaced on purpose. Pray oblige me in making the experiment with Mr. James Dodsley in four or five lines of any two editions of an author, and you’ll be convinced that it’s scarcely possible for the least difference, even of a point, to escape notice. I would recommend and practise the same method in an English author, where most people imagine themselves capable of correcting. (quoted in Simpson, 1970, p. 150)

‘Correct’ pointing by the middle of the eighteenth century, then, can no longer be identified with a reader’s breaks in speech. Indeed, in a period in which two reading models coexisted – reader as speaker and reader as hearer – ‘correct’ pointing may represent a step in a more general shift from the first model of reading to the second.

Addison’s Changes to Manuscript Punctuation The process can by illustrated by detailed case studies of the punctuation in print and manuscript in two writers, Joseph Addison and Ralph Thoresby. Addison’s practice is interesting because his written style was highly influential, having been perceived as worthy of imitation both during his own lifetime and later in the eighteenth century. Some of the features of his style are evident in his approach to punctuation. Thoresby’s practice is interesting for the opposite reason: he aspired to ‘correct usage’ but did not necessarily attain it. Where Addison was a leader, Thoresby was a somewhat unsuccesful follower.

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Addison is best remembered for The Spectator, produced with Richard Steele between 1711 and 1712 and again from 1714. Evidence of his status as an influential stylist can be found, for example, in the diary of Dudley Ryder, a law student in London in 1716. Ryder praises Addison’s style and states his own intention of using The Spectator as a stylistic model (Ryder, 1939, pp. 351, 372). He also remarks on the novelty of Addison’s (and Steele’s) writing, though it is not clear whether he is referring to the content or the prose style: ‘When we sat down to conversation we talked about that manner of writing which was brought so much into fashion by the Tatlers and Spectators and which the town has by this means got a relish of’ (16 February 1716; p. 183). Addison’s stylistic influence continued after his death, as Fitzmaurice has shown with reference to the later eighteenth century (Fitzmaurice, 2000, pp. 195–218). Addison’s writing and editorial methods are fairly well documented. He dictated much of his writing in the first instance, but then made adjustments to the resulting manuscript before it went to the printer. He subjected the printed text to careful proofreading, and made many further corrections when the folios were published in collected versions (see Fitzmaurice, 1994, p. 267; The Spectator, ed. Bond, 1965; Crum, 1954). Bod MS Don.d.112 is a valuable source text for Addison’s corrections to his own manuscripts before printing. The manuscript consists of short passages by Addison on a range of topics, many of which were later incorporated in published essays in The Spectator (see Crum, 1954, for a detailed account of the relationship between this manuscript and the printed texts). Most of Addison’s changes to the manuscript are to the punctuation of passages that were eventually printed, and they show some consistent patterns. Punctuation, for instance, is almost always added rather than removed, and most of the additions are of commas (the tendency to add rather than remove punctuation is also noted in Treip’s account of scribal copies and printed editions of Milton’s poetry; see Treip, 1970, p. 22). Added commas are especially common before clauses and phrases beginning with conjunctions, especially ‘and’; between phrases, words, and clauses with identity of reference (defined below); and at some subordinate clause boundaries. In addition, a comma between two main clauses is sometimes changed to a semicolon or a colon. In the following extracts from the manuscript and the printed versions, I have underlined the sections in which the punctuation of the two differs.

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Here, commas are added before the conjunction ‘and’. In each case ‘and’ introduces a new clause: Manuscript version A man that has been brought up among books and is able to talk of nothing else is an insupportable Companion & what we call a Pedant. (Bod MS Don. d.112, f. 9) Printed version A Man who has been brought up among Books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indifferent Companion, and what we call a Pedant. (Bond, 1965, vol. 1, p. 437)

A similar addition – before a conjunction introducing a new clause – appears in this example. Here the conjunction is ‘yet’: Manuscript version Of all Disparities that in humour makes the most unhappy Marriages yet scarce enters into our thoughts at the contracting of them. (f. 20) Printed version Of all Disparities, that in Humour makes the most unhappy Marriages, yet scarce enters into our Thoughts at the contracting of them. (p. 515)

This latter example illustrates another pattern in Addison’s alterations, the addition of commas between phrases, words, or clauses which have ‘identity of reference,’ that is, which refer to the same thing or concept. In this case the two items are ‘disparaties’ and ‘that’: the sentence can be paraphrased as ‘Of all possible disparaties between two people in a marriage, a disparity in humour is the most likely to make the marriage unhappy.’ Addison makes his somewhat confusing sentence clearer by putting a comma between ‘disparaties’ and ‘that’. A similar addition appears in this example: Manuscript version The truth of it is learning like travelling and all other methods of Improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insupportable, by supplying variety of matter to his Impertinence and giving him an Opportunity of abounding in Absurdities. (f. 10)

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Printed version The Truth of it is, Learning, like Travelling, and all other Methods of Improvement, as it finishes good Sense, so it makes a silly Man ten thousand times more insufferable, by supplying variety of Matter to his Impertinence, and giving him an Opportunity of abounding in Absurdities. (p. 438)

Commas are also added at some subordinate clause boundaries, in this example between ‘Chivalry’ and ‘where’: Manuscript version In books of Chivalry where the Point of Honour is strained to madness, ye whole story runs on Chastity and Courage. (f. 14) Printed version In Books of Chivalry, where the Point of Honour is strained to Madness, the whole Story runs on Chastity and Courage. (p. 417)

A comma between two main clauses is sometimes changed to a semicolon or colon, as in these three examples: Manuscript version If a man loses his Honour in one Rencounter it is not impossible for him to regain it in another, a slip in a Womans Honour is irrecoverable. (f. 14) Printed version If a Man loses his Honour in one Rencounter it is not impossible for him to regain it in another; a Slip in a Woman’s Honour is irrecoverable. (p. 416) Manuscript version The reason perhaps may be because no other vice implies a want of courage so much as ye making of a lie, & therefore telling a man he lies is touching him in the most sensible part of Honour and indirectly calling him a Coward. (f. 16) Printed version The Reason perhaps may be, because no other Vice implies a want of Courage so much as the making of a Lie: And therefore telling a Man he Lies, is touching him in the most sensible part of Honour, and indirectly calling him a Coward. (p. 418)

58 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Manuscript version There is nothing of so great Importance to us as the good qualities of one to whom we join ourselves to for life, they do not only make our present State agreeable, but often determine our happiness to all Eternity. (f. 19) Printed version There is nothing of so great Importance to us, as the good Qualities of one to whom we join our selves for Life; they do not only make our present State agreeable, but often determine our Happiness to all Eternity. (p. 515)

These examples illustrate typical patterns of change to manuscript passages which have been selected by Addison for publication. He adds punctuation at a range of syntactic junctions: before clauses and phrases beginning with conjunctions; between clauses and phrases having identity of reference; before subordinate clauses; and between main clauses. The added punctuation makes the syntactic relationships between items clearer. Yet it would not be easy to generate consistent rules for the use of punctuation marks from these examples, except to say that the marks indicate pauses, and that the colon and the semicolon indicate longer pauses than the comma. It is the addition of pauses which clarifies the syntactic relationships of the original version, and not some meaning assignable to the punctuation marks apart from pausing. As he moves from dictating to a scribe to reading and correcting silently, Addison is able to add new pauses and lengthen existing ones – additions which would be more liable to misinterpretation in spoken discourse than in (inwardly sounded) silent reading. The added punctuation helps clarify syntax because the pauses reduce potential ambiguities. The move from reading aloud to silent reading removes the potential ambiguity of many, if not most, pauses, and permits Addison to add pauses to aid the reader in processing in a variety of syntactic contexts (Fodor, 2002a; Hill and Murray, 2000). In the following example, repeated from above, the first pause may help the reader decide whether ‘that’ is a dependent relative pronoun or a demonstrative pronoun: Manuscript version Of all Disparities that in humour makes the most unhappy Marriages yet scarce enters into our thoughts at the contracting of them. (f. 20)

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Printed version Of all Disparities, that in Humour makes the most unhappy Marriages, yet scarce enters into our Thoughts at the contracting of them. (p. 515)

When the reader is a hearer, it is possible to increase the number of pauses used for syntactic disambiguation (making syntactic relationships less ambiguous) because such pauses are less likely to be misinterpreted than if the reader is a speaker.

Thoresby’s Letters to the Royal Society Thoresby’s manuscripts do not provide the same opportunity to observe authorial changes to punctuation as Addison’s do, but they show the changes made by others to improve his texts before printing. His archive also provides evidence that he read the printed (and altered) versions carefully and was therefore likely to be aware of the changes made. A comparison of Thoresby’s manuscripts with their printed versions, therefore, can reveal his response to changes which often reflected the newer model of the reader, as a hearer. In writing for the Royal Society, Thoresby entered a new social sphere in which he was unaided by explicit rules of correctness. Observing the changes made to his manuscripts was perhaps his best guide to adapting his own practice to that of the more prestigious group. Speakers and writers usually make an effort to tailor their language to that of the group they admire and seek to belong to, and Thoresby admired and wished for the approval of his Royal Society peers. It is to be expected, therefore, that he adapts his language wherever possible to reflect the changes made to his manuscripts, and that is what happens, in two areas – changes to capitalization and italicization. A statistical analysis of his texts shows that his adaptations in these two areas are in line with the corrections to his manuscripts. But the picture is less clear with respect to his changes in the area of punctuation. The changes made by Hans Sloane, the secretary of the Royal Society, to Thoresby’s letters follow Addison’s pattern. And an initial analysis of Thoresby’s practice following the letters’ publication does suggest that he may have responded to Sloane’s improvements. Closer analysis of the texts in question, however, shows that, except in very specialized contexts, he continues to avoid using the long pauses preferred by Addison and Sloane. His prose assumes a reader as a speaker; to add long pauses would make the text difficult to perform

60 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

effectively. Despite strong incentives, therefore, to adopt Sloane’s practice, Thoresby is not always able to do so because his underlying model of reading is the older one, of the reader as a hearer. There are four main sources of information concerning the changes to Thoresby’s texts. First, a number of Thoresby’s letters to Hans Sloane were published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions with varying degrees of alteration. Both the letters, showing editorial markings, and the journals have survived. Second is Thoresby’s topography of Leeds, the Ducatus Leodiensis of 1715. There is no manuscript for this work (although some passages used in the book have survived among Thoresby’s papers). But his diary gives a careful account of the publication process; he actually lived with the printer in London for a short time and supervised the correction of the sheets himself (see Ezell, 1999, pp. 93–6, for the publishing history of the Ducatus). Simpson’s work on proofreading (1970) gives valuable background information on the correcting processes involved in antiquarian volumes of precisely this kind at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The third source of information is Thoresby’s diary itself, which offers examples of his practice over many years. And the fourth is Thoresby’s letters to his fellow antiquarian and spiritual mentor, John Sharp, the archbishop of York, which I have used for comparison with the Sloane letters and the diaries.

Editorial Practice at the Royal Society Only the letters to Hans Sloane, the secretary of the Royal Society and editor of its Philosophical Transactions, show instances of Thoresby’s punctuation being changed by an editor or printer before publication. Thoresby was elected to the Royal Society in 1697 in response to the first of his letters to Sloane, continued to be a regular correspondent through the first decade of the eighteenth century, and saw a number of his letters published in the Transactions. For a socially mobile writer like Thoresby, ‘correct’ use was alarmingly uncodified; the only way to gauge correctness was by careful observation of the changes made to his manuscript. At this period, the boundary between texts written in a personal capacity and those written for a wider audience was not clearly drawn, and the role of the editor in deciding what was correct was undefined. Certainly Sloane was not an editor of the Transactions in the present-day sense: instead of receiving articles, sifting them for inclusion, and ensuring that they conformed to editorial standards, he received personal letters, many of which included private material alongside

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their information for the ‘curious,’ from Fellows and non-Fellows alike. His correspondents seem to have had implicit faith in his ability to distinguish between what was suitable for printing and what was not. In a published version of two of Thoresby’s letters, for example, he included some of Thoresby’s religious reflections, and it is likely that Thoresby himself considered such reflections suitable for the Royal Society’s readership at large (BL MS Sloane 4039, ff. 240, 271). Only once does Thoresby reveal uncertainty about what Sloane might circulate, when he explicitly requests confidentiality with respect to an ill-natured letter he has received from a mutual acquaintance: Honored Sr. ’Tis 12 months since I had the favour of a line from you, wch. I willingly attribute to ye great throng you hav had about matters of greater moment, I had the ill hap to enquire of yr friend Dr W: whethe the Lette with the Roman Monumts. had appeared at Gresham Col: because if it had miscarryed (wch. I was afraid of because of your silence) I could not retrieve a Coppy of it, & hav rec’d such an ill natured return (because not addressed to himself) as I never had from any Gentm. but this only to your self. (BL MS Sloane 4039, f. 136)

The need Thoresby feels to ensure confidentiality in this case illustrates the general default assumption that letters, even those apparently written in a personal capacity, could be circulated. Writing for the Royal Society, we can conclude, put the writer in an uncertain position. His ultimate audience might read him in print, but his immediate audience was Sloane, who was both a friend and the secretary of the Society. There was no ‘style book’ for newcomers, or those uncertain of the conventions. By 1710, the lack of a guide was creating such conspicuous problems that Sloane attempted to clarify the situation, as his preface to the volume of the Transactions for 1709 shows: there have happened Expressions, which some have thought Reflecting; the Readers are desired to look upon all such Expressions as proceeding only from the Writers of the Papers, without receiving any Authority from the Royal Society, who leave the publishing of these Transactions to their Secretary, and without being observed by the Publisher before they came abroad. And for preventing the like Reflections for the future, all Persons that are desirous of having their Papers inserted into these Transactions, are requested to transmit them free from such Expressions, as may give offence, or cause their Papers to be laid aside. (Jan.–Feb. 1709, vol. 26, no. 319, p. 292)

62 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

Thoresby began writing to Sloane when uncertainty as to the nature of Sloane’s editorial role was at its height, and when he himself could therefore never be certain whether or not his letters would appear in print, and who their final audience would be. His only way of finding out whether or not his use of language was correct was by comparing his manuscript copies with the final printed versions. This is exactly what he seems to have done. He kept a letter book recording the letters he sent and was scrupulous in acquiring every number of the Transactions. His diary and letters also show that he spent many hours in careful examination of the Transactions. Thoresby’s minute attention to the printed versions of his manuscripts is unsurprising. He had every motivation to adopt the linguistic practice of the Royal Society. His transitions from merchant to gentleman and from Presbyterian to Anglican represented definite steps up the social ladder. There is considerable evidence offered by present-day linguistic research that the language of speakers converges with that of those whose approval they desire; the greater the desire for approval, the greater the convergence (see, for example, Giles and Smith, 1979, p. 47). Thoresby’s desire for the approval of men like Sloane is also clear from his own writings. He regarded his early publications and his election to the Society as great honours, according to the autobiography he wrote in later years for his sons: ‘but without my knowledge the Letters were printed in the Philosophical Transactions, wch. I was so surprizd with yt my dear wife was solicitous to know wt. was contained in yt Lette yt made me blush, wn. Dr. Lister writ ytt he had com-unicated my Lette to the Royal-Society’ (YAS MS 26, p. 134). For Thoresby, the Society was not a remote institution known only through its publications, like a learned journal in the present day, but an organization of men with whom he had personal acquaintance. His diary records encounters with Boyle, Wren, Locke, Newton, and others during trips to London (Hunter, 1830, vol. 1, pp. 336–7; vol. 2, p. 32 and elsewhere). It also reveals his high opinion of these men, which no doubt he hoped would be reciprocated. So his wish to adopt their linguistic practices in print also represented a wish to conform with them as a social group. His desire to emulate his Royal Society peers was probably heightened by social anxieties which are reflected in a number of his actions and texts. When he gave up business and Presbyterianism in pursuit of a gentleman’s status, he began to research his family tree, and eventually he was led to acquire a coat of arms, which was printed at the front of

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the Ducatus Leodiensis (1715a), where he describes himself as ‘Gent.’. In the preface, he apologizes for excluding merchants from his listings of local pedigrees, and he blames those merchant families who have not taken the steps he has taken to establish gentle status: ‘But themselves are to be blamed for not proceeding in a regular Method, for the procuring or confirming such as are supposed to belong to their Families … Mr. Philipot is said to deserve highly of the City of London for proving in a learned and ingenious Book, That Gentry doth not abate with Apprenticeship, but only sleep during the Time of the Indentures, and awaketh again when they are expired’ (Thoresby, 1715a, p. xii). Thoresby also had anxieties about his status as a man of learning. In the same preface, he defends his inclusion of the catalogue of his museum in a topography: ‘But Freedom from censuring will not, I fear, quit me from being censured, particularly as to the Catalogue of Antiquities (though inserted at the special Request of several Learned Men) with the Natural and Artificial Curiosities in this Musaeum, which some Persons of supercilious Gravity pursue the Collectors of, with no small Scorn and Contempt’ (pp. xiv–xv).

Changes to Thoresby’s Manuscripts What, then, was the nature of the changes made to Thoresby’s manuscripts, and how successfully did Thoresby emulate them? It is not always possible to be certain whether the changes are Sloane’s or the printer’s. But all the changes marked on the manuscript were incorporated in the printed version, and had been available for Thoresby to inspect. Changes not marked on the manuscript – having to do with spelling, capitalization, and the use of italic type – can be assumed to be the work of the printer. There were no substantial additions to the text of Thoresby’s letters, except for headings, such as ‘A letter from Mr. Ralph Thoresby FRS. concerning a Roman inscription lately found at York &c.’ (BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 276r). Most of Sloane’s changes affected punctuation. An examination of changes with respect to capitalization and other visual elements provides evidence of Thoresby’s willingness to adapt in areas like these, in which imitation was easy. It also suggests that his failure to adopt Sloane’s punctuation practice arose not from unwillingness but from inability consequent upon his use of a different model of reading. But I shall begin with an analysis of the other changes made by the printer.

64 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

Changes to Thoresby’s Text: Capitalization, Italicization, and Standardized Spelling The pattern of change towards capitalization can be illustrated by a detailed comparison of one letter, BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 272, with its printed version, Philosophical Transactions, Jan.–March 1706–7, vol. 25, no. 305, pp. 2194–5. The letter is about eight hundred words long. The printed version capitalizes twenty-eight words written in minuscule, or ‘small,’ letters in the manuscript. Of these, twenty are nouns. Another three newly capitalized words are found in the conventional words of the conclusion, ‘Your Most Obliged and Obedient Servant’. The remaining non-nouns now capitalized are ‘Learned’ in the epithet ‘the very Learned Sir Henry Savile’; ‘Honoured’ in the epithet ‘Honoured Friend’; and ‘This’ at the beginning of what might be seen as a new sentence, ‘This I receiv’d …’. So the pattern of change is almost always in one direction – minuscule letter in manuscript to capital in print – and predominantly affects one word class, nouns (but see Osselton, 1985, which argues for systematic capitalization by printers). These capitalized nouns are hard to fit into a single category. They include both abstract and concrete nouns, and the list is diverse enough to include ‘Book’, ‘Inscription’, ‘Author’, ‘Transcript’, ‘Number’, ‘Foot’, ‘Reign’, ‘Workmen’, ‘Highways’, ‘Brick’, ‘Parts’, and ‘Peace’. The nouns not capitalized include ‘reception’, ‘slaughter’, and ‘middle’. But there is only one word spelled with a capital in the manuscript and a minuscule letter in print, ‘Seventy’. As well as capitalizing words in Thoresby’s manuscript, the printer prints in italic type some words not underlined in the manuscript. These changes are far less frequent than those towards capitalization and are limited to specific parts of the letter. The printer italicizes the concluding formula, ‘Your Most Obliged and Obedient Servant’, and also the words ‘Roman’ (which Thoresby usually underscores) and ‘Basserelieve’. Finally, the printer makes many changes to Thoresby’s spelling. In each case, the printer’s spelling is the one which would be declared correct by Johnson’s Dictionary fifty years later (Johnson, 1755); the suggestion is that the printer’s changes are in the direction of standardization (see table 2.1). How did Thoresby respond to these changes? Table 2.2 gives figures for capitalized nouns in samples from two volumes of Thoresby’s diary and also from his autobiography. The first diary sample is from 1696, the year when he was in crisis over the question of his joining the

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Table 2.1 Selected spelling changes from manuscript to print in a letter from Thoresby to Hans Sloane Manuscript

Print

Vacancys

vacancies

Agoe

ago

midle

middle

Dos

Does

later

Latter

Sources: BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 272; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Jan.–March 1706–7, vol. 25, no. 305, pp. 2194–5. Table 2.2 Number of capitalized nouns in samples from Thoresby’s diary, 1696 and 1701, and autobiography, 1714 No. of nouns with capital letter

No. of nouns with minuscule letter

Total no. of nouns in sample

% of nouns with capital letter

Diary, 1696

199

551

750

27

Diary, 1701

274

509

750

37

Autobiography, 1714

200

482

682

41

Sources: See the appendix.

established church, and when he first came in contact with the Royal Society. The second is from 1701. By this time, Thoresby had chosen both Anglicanism and a gentleman’s status and had already seen some of his letters published in the Philosophical Transactions. The third sample is from his manuscript autobiography, which was written for his sons sometime beginning in 1714 and consists largely of excerpts from his diary of earlier periods which he has copied and sometimes altered. I have excluded sermon notes from all samples because it was not clear whether reported speech might involve practices different from those in the rest of the texts. The numbers present a steady increase in the use of capital letters in texts written for Thoresby himself and for his family, with a particularly marked increase in the five years following his debut in the Philosophical

66 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

Transactions. Thoresby’s sensitivity to capitalization at this particular time is evident elsewhere. A letter to John Sharp of 1699 begins with a compliment on Sharp’s notes on historical coins. Thoresby scores out the word ‘accurate’ and replaces it with ‘Accurate’, the suggestion being that he considered the capitalization an improvement: May it please your Grace The more distinctly I peruse your Lordships most accurate Accurate Observations upon our English Silver Coins, the more I am ravished with them. (GRO Boxes 77a and 84)

There is evidence also in the Ducatus Leodiensis of Thoresby’s adding capitals to his text in imitation of the printed versions of his letters. BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 272, the letter to Sloane analysed earlier in this section, contains material which was used again in the Ducatus. The version Thoresby supplied to the printers in 1715 follows the corrected version rather than the original manuscript; in the following samples, newly capitalized letters are printed in boldface type: From Thoresby’s letter to Sloane of 1 June 1706 This Monument was found in Trinity yard in Micklegate at York & was happily rescued by my honored friend Dr . Bryan Fairfax, from the brutish workmen who had broke it in the midle, & were going to make use of it for two throughs as they call them, in the wall. (BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 272) From the same letter, as printed in the Philosophical Transactions This Monument was found in Trinity-yard in Mickle-gate at York, and was happily rescued by my Honoured Friend Dr Bryan Fairfax, from the brutish Workmen, who had broke it in the middle, and were going to make use of it for two Throughs, as they call them, in the Wall. (Philosophical Transactions, Jan.–March 1706–7, vol. 25, no. 305, pp. 2194–5) From the Ducatus Leodiensis, 1715 The said Sepulchral Monument was happily rescued by Dr. Bryan Fairfax, from the brutish Workmen who had broke it in the Middle, and were going to make use of it for two Throughs, as they call them, to bind the Wall. (Thoresby, 1715a, p. 562)

The passage from the Ducatus suggests that the text Thoresby supplied to his printers in 1715 was an exact copy of neither his original letter nor the printed version in the Transactions: the wording is somewhat different

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throughout the new text, as well as in this extract from it. But the 1715 version adopts the capitalization practice of the printed version; all the capitals are retained, and a new one is added (‘Middle’). There is evidence, then, that Thoresby observed the changes made to minuscule letters in his manuscripts and changed his own writing in response. The same could be said of his underscoring and its print equivalent, italic type. As mentioned earlier, the printer’s changes here are far less frequent. But there is evidence in other texts that the printer’s corrections towards italicization may have affected Thoresby’s practice. In BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 288, a letter dated 17 June 1702 and thus written four years before the letter discussed above, Thoresby informs Sloane of the discovery of a Roman coffin near York. None of the words are underscored. In the printed version of the letter, however, six words are italicized. These italicized words are the kinds of nouns Thoresby would underscore in the 1706 letter: ‘Mr Montague Gyles’s’; ‘Roman Burying-place’; ‘Monsieur Muret’; and ‘Antonines’. Even after Thoresby has begun to introduce his own underscoring in imitation of the printer, the printer goes on to add more italicization in successive printed letters. Consequently, Thoresby’s later letters to Sloane have liberal underscoring where his early ones had none. It is worth noting that Thoresby does not underscore words in his letters to Archbishop John Sharp, irrespective of topic or period. The suggestion is that he believed underscoring was suitable for letters which might end up being printed, but was not necessarily suitable, was perhaps even unsuitable, in a correspondence such as with the archbishop.

Changes to Thoresby’s Text: Punctuation The foregoing analysis shows that Thoresby responded to changes made in print to his spelling and letter form by changing his practice, not only in texts directed to the Royal Society but also in unrelated texts such as his diaries. But he did not adapt his punctuation practice in the same way, as is made clear by examining the changes to the punctuation in his manuscripts. The printed version of the letter discussed above, BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 272, contains 51 changes to Thoresby’s punctuation. Sixteen of these are substitutions, usually of a semicolon for a comma. Another 34 introduce punctuation where Thoresby had none, usually a comma. Only in one instance is Thoresby’s punctuation removed. The pattern of change – from nothing to commas, and from commas to semicolons – recalls Addison’s editorial alterations to his own manuscripts. The punctuation added to Thoresby’s letter, as to Addison’s

68 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

texts, has the effect of disambiguating the syntactic relationships between adjacent items by creating pauses. In the following samples, the corresponding passages are highlighted in boldface type: Manuscript version tho it hath this very remarkable That it is an undeniable Argument that the Ninth Legion was not only in Britain, wch is rarely taken notice of, but that it resided at Yorke wch was heretofore unknown. (BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 272) Printed version tho it hath this very remarkable, That it is an undeniable Argument that the Ninth Legion was not only in Britain, which is rarely taken notice of, but that it resided at York; which was heretofore unknown. (Philosophical Transactions, Jan.–March 1706–7, vol. 25, no. 305, p. 2194)

In the printed version, a comma is inserted after ‘remarkable’ and before ‘That’. This kind of alteration is common in the printed versions of Thoresby’s letters to Sloane. It resembles Addison’s use of pauses to separate items with identity of reference (in this case, ‘this’ and ‘That it is …’). The printed version also inserts a pause between ‘York’ and ‘which’; here the pause helps the reader process the preceding multiple subordinations. Sloane also resembles Addison as an editor in his use of semicolons to separate main clauses: Manuscript version the learned & Ingenious Roger Gale Esqr was so kind as to send me a new transcript, & I have by me also a third lately taken by a grave Divine, all wch. agree that it is the VIIIIth Legion, wch is also confirm’d by the other Inscription upon the Brick wch. was but lately found. (BL MS Sloane 4025, f. 272) Printed version the Learned and Ingenious Roger Gale, Esq; was so kind as to send me a new Transcript; and I have by me also a third, lately taken by a grave Divine; all which agree that it is the IXth Legion, which is also confirm’d by the other Inscription upon the Brick, which was but lately found. (Philosophical Transactions, Jan.–March 1706–7, vol. 25, no. 305, p. 2194)

Like Addison, Sloane converts a comma into a longer pause to mark the boundaries of main clauses.

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Thoresby may have sought to imitate the linguistic practices apparent in the printed version of his letters, but there is evidence that he continued to avoid using lengthy pauses (above all, the full stop, the lengthiest pause of all) except in very specialized contexts. A statistical analysis of the punctuation marks in samples of his texts at first seems to show him adapting his punctuation to that of his editors, but closer examination shows that in fact he continued to avoid long pauses like full stops in most contexts. Before presentation of this analysis, one or two points of methodology should be noted. As with the counts for capital letters outlined earlier, I have not included sermon notes in the samples, since it is not possible to untangle Thoresby’s practice from the preacher’s. I have, however, counted punctuation which introduces or closes sermon notes in the diary extracts. I have ignored marks which are clearly being used to indicate abbreviation rather than pausing, such as the colon in ‘Queen Eliz:’. I have also ignored the sign [& …]. This sign is often used by Thoresby to indicate ‘etcetera’, but there are instances in which the dots which follow the ampersand seem to be elongated into a line [–]. It is clear in at least some instances that these lines indicate pauses. But because [& …] is so frequently ambiguous, it seemed better not to include it. In the case of [“.”] and [()] I have counted each pair of marks as one mark. Thoresby uses lines of various lengths and degrees of elevation to indicate pauses. Since it is rarely possible to distinguish meaningfully between these (between [/] and [–], for example), I have classified all such marks as lines [–]. The results of the analysis are illustrated in tables 2.3 and 2.4. The figures indicate that, as with capitalization, Thoresby was learning punctuation from the printed versions of his texts. The overall number of marks indicating pauses rises from 63 per thousand words in 1696 to 78 per thousand words in 1701 and 86 per thousand words in the 1714 autobiography; this rise recalls the increase in use of capital letters through the same sequence of samples, from 27 per cent of nouns to 37 per cent and then 41 per cent. In each sample, the most commonly used pause is the comma. But there is a suggestion that by 1714 Thoresby was using more long pauses than in 1696, in particular more full stops, which are rare or non-existent in the two earlier samples. At first sight, then, Thoresby seems to be using more pauses and to have adopted a new point, the full stop, in the process. Yet a closer examination of the samples and a comparison of these texts to Thoresby’s letters to John Sharp suggest that such an account is not

70 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Table 2.3 Number of various punctuation marks in samples from Thoresby’s diary, 1696 and 1701, and autobiography, 1714 Diary, 1696 (4493 words)

Diary, 1701 (4373 words)

Autobiography, 1714 (2961 words)

[.]

0

4

34

[,]

236

315

200

[;]

23

3

2

[()]

13

15

15

[“.”]

1

0

3

[–]

10

6

0

283

343

254

Total

Sources: See the appendix. Table 2.4 Number of various punctuation marks per 1000 words in samples from Thoresby’s diary, 1696 and 1701, and autobiography, 1714 Diary, 1696

Diary, 1701

Autobiography, 1714

[.]

0

1

11

[,]

53

72

68

[;]

5

1

1

[()]

3

3

5

[“.”]

0

0

1

[–] Total

2

1

0

63

78

86

Sources: See the appendix.

entirely satisfactory. Both the diary texts and the letters indicate that Thoresby’s repertoire of punctuation in the late 1690s and early 1700s included the full stop, but that he regarded this long pause as appropriate only in certain highly specialized environments.

Thoresby’s Specialized Uses of Long Pauses Thoresby’s use of the full stop can be seen in an analysis of the punctuation in ten of his (manuscript) letters to Sharp, the archbishop of York, written between 1695 and 1704. The letters consist of 6,373 words (including

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Table 2.5 Number of full stops in Thoresby’s letters to John Sharp, 7 January 1699 and 10 June 1699 7 January 1699 (1310 words)

10 June 1699 (1118 words)

[.]

14

7

[,]

63

79

[:]

1

0

[()]

7

8

[“.”]

0

0

[–] Total

1

1

86

95

Source: GRO Boxes 77a and 84.

the 336 words of a quotation from another author); they mostly concern either coins and coin collecting, or Thoresby’s spiritual needs as he moves from Presbyterianism to Anglicanism, with a few containing passages in which Thoresby asks for Sharp’s help, for example in legal matters. Only four of the letters include unambiguous full stops, and two of these four include only one full stop, at the end of a postscript. The other two (see table 2.5) include several full stops in similar, and specialized, environments; such as the following set of short queries and statements about the coins in Thoresby’s and other collections: §1. The Pieces –. Whether the Three half penny piece of Q. Eliz.s be not bad money, mine is so bad, that (but for the Indenture) I am ready to ascribe it to Eds.6.th to wm. the Inscription, E.D.G.ROSA.SINE.SPINA, suits as wel,? Q. Whethe any of Q. Eliz.s farthings be extant? I have about half a score of the smal pieces wth a rose on either side, without any Legend, but they all come up to the half penny weight. Whethe K. James 1sts twopence & pence have any thing but the Arms upon the Reverse. (Thoresby to Sharp, 7 January 1699, GRO Boxes 77a and 84)

Thoresby uses this elliptical, note-taking style, with its changes from query to abrupt statement, only when dealing with the subject of rare coins. These are passages which were very likely to be copied by an amanuensis and circulated to other coin collectors who might be able to help the inquirer; they constitute a very specific text type, one which

72 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

would be recognized immediately by Thoresby’s fellow collectors. The style of writing in abbreviated notes encourages far more long pauses than a less specialized passage of discursive prose would, so the use of long pauses here should not be taken as evidence that Thoresby had adopted long pauses for more general kinds of writing. One example of the formulaic and specialized nature of texts like these is the repetition of ‘I have’ followed by identification of an item in the collection. This structure is found in similar passages by other writers; its function was to let other collectors know what was in the writer’s own collection. Its use illustrates its familiarity to both writer and audience, who would hardly have regarded texts of this type as subject to the same stylistic rules as other kinds of writing. In the letter just quoted from, Thoresby’s expressions include ‘I have about half a score’; ‘I have all the three sorts’; ‘I have a penny’; ‘and I have also’; ‘I have 3 of H 3ds’; ‘I hav 4 of H2d’. Sharp uses the same construction when writing about coins to Thoresby: ‘I have a penny with the three crowns’ (Hunter, 1832, vol. 1, pp. 342–3). So does Sharp’s and Thoresby’s acquaintance William Nicolson, the archdeacon of Carlisle: ‘I have several in my own possession’; ‘I have a few of the coins of that kingdom’ (Hunter, 1832, vol. 1, pp. 316, 364). Thoresby and other correspondents sometimes use a similar style, characterized by abrupt statements of ownership and a sequence of detached queries, in their letters to the Royal Society. In a letter published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1708, Thoresby writes of some Roman coins, ‘John Dyneley of Bramhope Esq; has also three’ (July–Aug. 1708, vol. 26, no. 316, p. 134). A 1699 letter from Mr Dale to Dr Martin Lister concerning insects, published in the Transactions, contains the expressions ‘although of most of them I have at present but single Specimens …’ and ‘A third I have which is by you figured …’ (Feb. 1699, vol. 21, no. 249, pp. 51–2). The resemblance of these passages to short dictated notes is not accidental. One of their authors’ purposes in writing was to circulate information as to the ownership of certain rarities for the benefit of other collectors. The letters were often copied by an amanuensis and sent to other scholars, as this one from Sharp to Thoresby reveals: I take the opportunity to send you these papers, which contain my observations and conjectures about the silver coins of England. I had not thought them worthy of your sight, but that heretofore having read some of them to you, out of my short-hand, you was then pleased to express your desire that they might be written at length … Since that, Mr. Archdeacon Nicolson was

Pausing for Effect

73

pleased to send me his Discourse about the English Coins … Upon this, instead of making any remarks upon what he had writ … I set myself to get transcribed my notes. (Hunter, 1832, vol. 1, p. 342)

Sharp is going to have his notes transcribed; that is, he will have an amanuensis copy the material and send it to Thoresby. Sharp is also used to reading his notes aloud. It is this dictation for the purpose of circulation which accounts for Thoresby’s use of full stops in only those two passages in his letters to Sharp which include material of this kind. To minimize the time and money involved in copying text, the writer must express the material in as concise a form as possible. Hence the abrupt and elliptical nature of the writing; hence also the unprecedentedly long and frequent pauses marked by Thoresby. These pauses are entirely to be expected in passages which were being dictated – a long pause at the end of a passage gives the amanuensis time to catch up with the speaking voice. These two letters show that the full stop was part of Thoresby’s repertoire at the time of the diary samples of 1696 and 1701. His decision not to use the full stop in the diaries, therefore, suggests that he considered its pause too long for the reader as a speaker to make, despite any impression to the contrary created by Sloane’s changes to his manuscript letters. A similarly specialized use of another long pause, the semicolon, can be seen in the first sample, from 1696. In comparison to commas, semicolons are rare in the sample: only 23 are used in the course of 4,490 words, compared to 236 commas. Of these twenty-three semicolons, fourteen (or 61 per cent) come before the words ‘Even’ (meaning ‘Evening’) and ‘Afte’ (meaning ‘Afternoon’). As I shall discuss in more detail in chapter 5, Thoresby’s diary entries are rigidly structured around divisions of the day into time periods, most often morning, afternoon, and evening. His relatively frequent use of semicolons in these contexts indicates not the disambiguation evident in Addison’s and Sloane’s substitutions of semicolons for commas, but a complete separation of topics (topic boundaries are discussed in more detail in chapter 3). The semicolons serve to separate the activities of the afternoon from those of the evening, as in this passage: morn read, Annots. [Annotations on the Bible] was much of day hurryed about Rape concerns & … rest as yesteday wth my poor weak friend for fear of the loss of whome I have many bitter pangs of sorrows, wch. I would faine

74 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Table 2.6 Number of full stops in Thoresby’s letters to John Sharp, 1695–1704 Letter no. (no. of words) 1 (667) [.]

1?

2 (515)

3 (1310)

4 (607)

5 (265)

6 (1118)

7 (706)

8 (440)

9 (265)

10 (480)

0

14

0

0

7

0

0

1

1

[,]

44

35

63

41

11

79

48

26

13

25

[:]

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

[()]

2

3

7

7

1

8

5

5

1

4

[“.”]

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

[–] Total

0

0

1

3

0

1

4

0

0

1

46

38

86

51

12

95

57

31

15

31

1. 21 June 1695; 2. 12 August 1698; 3. 7 January 1699; 4. 25 April 1699; 5. 7 June 1699; 6. 10 June 1699; 7. 8 January 1700; 8. 12 August 1702; 9. 22 August 1702; 10. 29 April 1704. Source: GRO Boxes 77a and 84.

convert into true repentance & godly sorrow for those Sins wch. ly as a cankerworm blast all creature comforts; Even found my dear friend much weaker. (22 September 1696; RLC MS NKS 2935, p. 172)

The ten instances of lines, that is, [–], being used to indicate pauses are even more strikingly specialized to this environment; nine of them appear before the word ‘Even’ or ‘Afternoon’. And even among the commas, a significant proportion – 17 per cent – is devoted to separating the periods of afternoon and evening. Again, pauses are being used to indicate a change of topic rather than to disambiguate. The 1696 diary, then, suggests that Thoresby used longer pauses sparingly: he avoided the full stop altogether (though it was in his repertoire) and tended to reserve semicolons, lines, and, to some extent, commas for definite changes in topic. The ten letters to Sharp from the 1690s and early 1700s also show a reluctance to use the full stop. In those of 7 January and 10 June 1699, full stops are reserved for passages of notes suitable for dictation, and in the other eight letters there are a single ambiguous instance of a full stop, two unambiguous instances (in 1702 and 1704), and no instances of semicolons. Despite a strong motivation to adopt the practices evident in Sloane’s corrections – strong enough to produce more liberal capitalization and

Pausing for Effect

75

italicization in his writing – Thoresby only rarely uses long pauses in his diaries and letters of the 1690s and early 1700s. When he does use them, his purpose is not to disambiguate syntax in the manner of Addison or Sloane, but, in the case of the semicolon, to indicate a change of topic, and, in the case of the full stop, to separate items in the stylistically specialized passages intended to function as notes for circulation among his fellow coin collectors. There is, however, an increase in the number of pauses of all kinds from the diary of 1696 to the diary of 1701, and the autobiography of 1714 not only continues the trend but shows a dramatic increase in the number of full stops (which to some extent are used to substitute for semicolons and lines). There is, then, good reason to think that Thoresby’s attitude to the use of pauses in writing changed as a result of his seeing his manuscripts corrected in print, although it took some years for the fundamental change – an acceptance of relatively frequent pauses as long as a full stop in all contexts – to appear in his writing: The apprehension of the growth & prevalency of a contrary temper in some of my familiar acquaintance & such as necessary busyness cald me daily into the company of, has seveal times of late sat heavy upon my Spirit & caused some restless nights as well as uneasy days. I endeavoured to convert my Sorrow into a right stream & humble my Soul before ye Lord for the Divisions & animositys in this poor afflicted Church & sinfull nation & especially for my own personall sins wch. may have contributed thereunto, & particularly for my unprofitableness under the means of Grace. (YAS MS 26, p. 125)

The two independent sentences here, distinguished by full stops, represent a significant change from Thoresby’s practice in the 1690s. Nevertheless, many elements of his language continue to suggest that his model of the reader was as a speaker rather than as a hearer. In the next chapter, I shall consider the relation between Thoresby’s desire to avoid long pauses and the grammatical structure of his writing.

3

Pausing for Breath

In chapter 2, I analysed the relationship between two different models of reading and pausing and punctuation. In this chapter, I develop the discussion of pausing and reading, this time in relation to syntax. A writer who assumes the model of the reader as a speaker can be likened to an orator: both the orator and the reader/speaker must hold the attention of a largely passive audience. Studies of oratory show that public speakers must take care to pause neither too often nor too long; in general, they should avoid long pauses except at topic boundaries (points at which one topic ends and a new one is introduced). Some topics are comparatively lengthy, and the writer who thinks of the reader as a speaker must sustain long passages without a long pause. The writer can do so by improvising connections between successive clauses rather than by separating the clauses into sentences – an improvisatory technique which can be observed in informal conversational language today. Where the writer thinks of the reader as a speaker, therefore, it can be difficult, or even impossible, to divide his or her prose into clearly bounded, standard grammatical sentences; the concept of the sentence to some extent becomes irrelevant. The constraints on (and techniques for avoiding) pausing in oratory once again can be illustrated in the writing of Thoresby, a writer whose model of the reader is as a speaker. By contrast, a writer who thinks of the reader as a hearer is free of the orator’s need to hold a live audience’s attention and can pause longer and more often. He or she can organize clauses into smaller units bounded by lengthy pauses – that is, into clearly bounded, standard grammatical sentences. Addison is such a writer. Whereas Thoresby

Pausing for Breath 77

assumes a reader-as-speaker model and improvises long sequences of loosely connected clauses in order to avoid long pauses except at topic boundaries, Addison assumes a reader-as-hearer model and is therefore free to pause longer and more often, and to organize his clauses into bounded units, or sentences. In the first part of the chapter, I illustrate this account with short extracts from Addison’s Spectator and Thoresby’s Ducatus, while drawing on research on oratory and on conversational speech in the present day. In the second part of the chapter, I elaborate the account by means of a numerical analysis of the syntactic features of longer samples by the same authors. Variation between relative clauses used is considered an indicator of differing styles and syntactic strategies. The numerical analysis is presented in two sections: the first counts different kinds of relative clause in the two samples and compares the results; the second measures the frequency with which relative clauses of all kinds are distributed across the samples. Some results of the numerical analysis are interpreted in the light of small-scale analysis, and the numerical analysis is enriched by comparison with Fitzmaurice’s studies of Addison and his contemporaries. My conclusion in the chapter is that, in combination, the small-scale analysis and the numerical analysis support my initial account of style and syntax in the two writers.

‘He Seems to Be Out of Breath’ In 1700, the lawyer and occasional controversialist William King published a satire on the Royal Society called The Transactioneer, consisting of a dialogue between a virtuoso (an amateur of science and learning associated with the Society) and a gentleman rather sceptical about the Society’s activities. The gentleman professes to be puzzled by the poor prose style of the Society’s Philosophical Transactions, and the virtuoso (or ‘Transactioneer’) is stuck for a reply. One of the contributions they discuss is a letter by Thoresby, and a lengthy extract from the letter appears in the text. The letter is an account of ‘Greatrix the stroker,’ an itinerant Irish healer who enjoyed some fame at the time, and of the healing techniques he used on the daughter of a local blacksmith. It is only fair to point out that The Transactioneer is attacking a passage in which Thoresby himself is citing another correspondent, so the words in question are not Thoresby’s own. But the stylistic features mocked by King are typical of Thoresby’s writing.

78 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

King’s chief stylistic criticism is that the prose seems breathless and disconnected: Gent. Pray Sir, was your Correspondent Compos Mentis, when he sent you that Relation, or was he in a Fright? Transact. Why do you ask such Questions? Gent. Because he seems to be out of Breath, or to Breath short in his Account of the Smith’s Daughters; one would think, his inconnexion an effect either of some disaffection of his Intellectuals, or that he was mightily surpriz’d at something. (King, 1700, p. 76)

Notably, the same charge – of breathlessness and disconnectedness – has been made against Thoresby’s fellow Nonconformist Daniel Defoe by present-day critics (see Furbank and Owens, 1988, pp. 125–9): King’s sensibility seems closer to that of the present day than to Thoresby’s. Indeed, King seems to have found the passage so flawed as to discourage The Transactioneer’s readers, and he edits it so as to make it less breathless and disconnected. His changes are of two kinds, to punctuation and to wording. The punctuation changes show that King is aligned with Addison and Sloane and in opposition to Thoresby in his approach to pausing. The changes to wording indicate that the contrasting attitudes to pausing govern not only the use of punctuation but also the organization of clauses and the selection of syntactic structures. In chapter 2, we saw that Addison increases the number of long pauses when editing his own writing. King does the same in editing Thoresby’s writing. The freedom with which both authors use full stops is very different from Thoresby’s reluctance at this time to use the long pause at all. King’s approach can be seen in the following passage from Thoresby’s original, quoted in The Transactioneer; where King has made changes, the original version is given in brackets: Mr. Greatrix coming to our House, and hearing of my Brother’s [his] Illness, desired to see him, he ordered the Boy to strip himself [him] to his Shirt, which he did, and having given present ease to his Head by only stroaking him [stroking it] with his Hands, he fell to rub his Back, which he most complained of. [,] But the Pain being frightened, presently [the Pain immediatly] fled from his Head [hand] to his Right Thigh; [,] he followed it there, it fell to his Knee, from thence to his Leg, but he still pursued it to his Ancle, thence to his Foot, and at the last [at last] to his great Toe.[,] As it fell lower, it grew more violent, especially when in his great [big] Toe, it made him

Pausing for Breath 79 roar out;[,] but upon rubbing it there, it stole out at his Toe-end [it vanished]; and the Boy cryed [cried] out, it’s [’Tis] quite gone. (King, 1700, pp. 74–6)

The original text in the Transactions contains no full stops. King, however, uses full stops to replace two commas, turns another two commas into semicolons, and adds one entirely new semicolon. Since King’s intention is to mock the original author’s reluctance to pause, saying it leaves him ‘out of breath,’ he might well have retained the original punctuation and thus exposed the object of his satire more fully; his adding pauses suggests that he fears the unedited text is simply incomprehensible. King has also changed the wording, again presumably out of fear that his readers will find the original too ‘unconnected’ to follow. The changes here are less radical; some of them are made merely to allow King to incorporate quotations from the original in his own sentences, such as the change from ‘his’ to ‘my brother’s’. But other changes seem to represent attempts to improve on style, and the effect is to make connections between clauses more explicit. Compare these two passages: Original version such as were troubled by Fits of the mother, he would presently take off the fit, by only laying his Glove on their Head. (Philosophical Transactions, 1699, vol. 21, pp. 332–4) Edited version But this Greatrix had another very excellent Quality, for he would presently take off Fits of the Mother, by laying his Glove on their Heads. (King, 1700, p. 76)

In the original version, the ‘he’ of the second clause refers not to ‘such’ in the immediately preceding clause but to Greatrix, and the connection between the clause beginning ‘such’ and the clause beginning ‘he’ is potentially unclear. King’s condensed version removes the ambiguity. Once again, King’s quotation from Thoresby’s letter is itself a quotation by Thoresby from another correspondent’s writing, so Thoresby’s own words are not being satirized here, and the editing of these loosely or ambiguously connected clauses cannot be seen as an editing of Thoresby’s own words. But loosely connected clauses like these are a defining feature of Thoresby’s prose, and this kind of text organization, unlike organization into autonomous sentences, arises from patterns of pausing, which in turn arise from a model of the reader as a speaker.

80 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

Clauses and Sentences Although it could be said that King’s changes divide the original text into sentences, his editing should not be seen as the work of a more sophisticated writer correcting the blunders of a less sophisticated one. Present-day scholars treat the sentence as the basic unit of prose, just as King seems to do. But it could be argued that the concept of the sentence is of limited relevance to a writer like Thoresby, that is, a writer who conceives of the reader as a speaker rather than as a hearer. The concept of the sentence is often treated as a given in linguistic and literary research, its properties so widely understood that there is seldom a need to define it. This is true of studies of speech as well as of writing. For example, the author of a rigorous and fascinating study entitled ‘Hesitations and Sentence Planning’ (Holmes, 1988) indicates that he feels safe in assuming that his readers understand what sentences are, and finds little need either to justify or to define his choice of the unit. And although there are, as Crystal puts it, ‘innumerable definitions’ of the sentence, a common theme runs through many of them: ‘Most linguistic definitions of the sentence show the influence of the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield, who pointed to the structural autonomy, or independence, of the notion of the sentence’ (Crystal, 1992, p. 313). Beyond this notion of autonomy, there is room to manoeuvre, particularly in the realm of speech rather than writing. To quote Crystal again, ‘Intonation and pause may give uncertain clues as to whether a sentence boundary exists’ (Crystal, 1992, p. 314). The relation between pause and sentence boundary is crucial to an understanding of the difference between Thoresby’s syntax and text organization and those of contemporaries like King and Addison. Differing uses of the full stop, discussed in chapter 2, provide one illustration. Addison’s frequent use of this long pause distinguishes him from Thoresby, who (at least in the 1690s and early 1700s) uses full stops in only one (highly specialized) context, that of writing notes for dictation. Addison, I have argued, is more liberal in his use of pauses, especially long pauses, because a text written by an author for whom the reader is a hearer is less vulnerable to having its silences misinterpreted than a text written by an author for whom the reader is a speaker. Addison (and those who share his model of reading), therefore, can uninhibitedly use pauses to clarify syntactic relationships. The notion of autonomy is important because the long

Pausing for Breath 81

pause, in this case indicated by the full stop, the longest of the available pauses, is used by Addison to indicate the limits of syntactic scope. It helps to divide a piece of writing into autonomous, bounded units – in other words, sentences. ‘Scope’ here is the length of a stretch of language affected by a particular form. Crystal gives the example of negation, which ‘normally extends from the negative word until the end of the clause.’ In this text, the scope of ‘not’ extends as far as ‘dance’ but not as far as ‘eat’: ‘I did not sing or dance and I did eat quite a lot’. Often, the scope of a word is less obvious than in this example, and ambiguity occurs. Addison clears up ambiguities of this sort by using long pauses such as full stops and, sometimes, colons and semicolons. The pauses create boundaries, and these in turn limit the scope of items the scope of which would otherwise be ambiguous: ‘This Project, as I have since heard, is post-poned ’till the Summer-Season; when it is thought the Coolness that proceeds from Fountains and Cascades will be more acceptable and refreshing to People of Quality. In the mean time, to find out a more agreeable Entertainment for the Winter-Season, the Opera of Rinaldo is filled with Thunder and Lightning, Illuminations, and Fireworks …’ (Bond, 1965, vol. 1, pp. 24–5). The long pause after ‘People of Quality’ limits the scope of ‘will be’ so that it does not extend as far as ‘to find’ in the next sentence. Without the pause the scope could be mistakenly extended, with misinterpretation the result, as in ‘the Coolness … will be more acceptable and refreshing to People of Quality in the mean time to find out’. Units like these, bounded in their scope by long pauses, exhibit the autonomy which Crystal identifies as the concept central to most definitions of the sentence. A sentence may be seen as an autonomous unit bounded by long pauses which limit scope and thereby prevent certain ambiguities. Sentences of this kind are not much in evidence in Thoresby’s writing, of which this passage is a sample: Sir John Osborne of Kelmarsh in the County of Northampton, had an only Daughter married to Sir John Peyton of Islam in the County of Cambridge, with whom all the Estate went from the Family of the Osborne’s, except about 600l. per Annum in Essex, and an House called Parstow, which were settled upon Richard Osborne, younger Brother of the said Sir John, which Richard I take to be the first in the preceding Pedigree, which was enter’d in the Heralds Office, (E. 1. Folio 190.) when Sir Hewet Osborne was but one Year and … Days old. (Thoresby, 1715a, p. 3)

82 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

The passage resists division into autonomous units. In the first place, there are no long pauses. Moreover, many of the clauses have verb phrases which cannot intelligibly be divorced from the previous clause, such as ‘went’ in ‘all the Estate went’; ‘were settled’ in ‘which were settled’; ‘take’ in ‘take to be’; ‘was enter’d’; and ‘was’ in ‘was but one Year’. To create Addisonian sentences from this passage, it would not be enough, or even possible, to insert long pauses. Instead, it would be necessary to create new main clauses by changing the wording: with her all the Estate went from the Family of the Osborne’s … These were settled upon Richard Osborne … This Richard I take to be the first in the preceding Pedigree … This was enter’d in the Heralds Office, (E. 1. Folio 190.) when Sir Hewet Osborne was but one Year …

So Thoresby’s aversion to long pauses is manifested here not only in his reluctance to use full stops, semicolons, and colons, but also in his syntactic organization.

Prose Style, Oratory, and Conversation Thoresby’s style of syntactic organization should not be seen, however, as William King appears to see it – as representing a failure to grasp the concept of the sentence. Research into the language of oratory and conversation suggests that Thoresby uses long sequences of clauses like these with good reason, as part of a strategy for holding the attention of his reader’s listeners. Thoresby’s reader/speaker shares a core problem with the orator: how to hold the attention of an audience which is not free to participate in the discourse. As Atkinson puts it: ‘The problem arises from the fact that such talk goes on for an extremely long time compared with the modes of speaking used in the course of most human communication. The types of verbal exchange with which we are all far more familiar involve much shorter bursts of talk, and only comparatively rarely is it difficult to remain attentive to what someone is saying during a conversation’ (Atkinson, 1984, p. 10). In one-sided discourse like oratory, however, in which a speaker addresses a passive listener or listeners, the audience lacks an important motivation for paying attention: the risk of being discovered. It is therefore potentially more difficult in oratory than in conversation to keep the audience’s attention, so managing

Pausing for Breath 83

pauses carefully is crucial. In Atkinson’s words: ‘With regard to the question of timing, audiences appear to be continually on the look-out for suitable completion points in the talk where applause can occur … These most commonly occur when the speaker sums up the gist of an argument before developing a related point or moving to a new topic. Applause thus regularly occurs at the end of a flow of talk which is approximately equivalent to a paragraph of written text’ (pp. 32–3). Audiences are alert for ‘completion points,’ and if there are too many long pauses, the audience may applaud or interrupt too often. As a result, the most important unit of speech governing the timing of pauses is not the sentence but, as Atkinson puts it, an ‘argument,’ a ‘point,’ a ‘topic,’ or the ‘equivalent to a paragraph of written text.’ A pause as long as ‘a whole second’ in oratory is likely to cause embarrassment (p. 33). Of course, a text on topography addressed to an audience of fellow antiquarians is not equivalent to a speech addressed to a political conference. But oratorical modes of speech and verbal performance designed to rouse an audience’s emotions were more deeply ingrained in Thoresby than in most present-day speakers, or even in many speakers of his own day. His Calvinist and Nonconformist upbringing is partly responsible. Some seventeenth-century church-goers used shorthand sermon notes in order to re-create a sermon at home, and schoolboys were often expected to memorize the Sunday sermon and then perform it in school on Monday morning (Hart, 1949, p. 46). Thoresby was entirely at home in this culture, of hearing several long sermons in a week and ‘repeating’ or performing them elsewhere, as he records in his diary: ‘aftenoon enjoyed some friends here, RG & GC prayed well & I repeated a Sermon of ye Excellent Mr. Sharps’ (8 October 1696; RLC MS NKS 2935, p. 176). Thoresby and his like-minded contemporaries also placed a value on prayer as an oratorical performance. As in preaching, a good performer in prayer was one who could move his (or, sometimes, her) audience emotionally, which inevitably involved holding the audience’s attention. So although Atkinson’s examples of oratory are taken from political speeches and not from the domains Thoresby was familiar with, oratorical performance was second nature to Thoresby both as a speaker and as a listener. For a writer like Thoresby who thinks of a reader as a speaker, then, pauses should coincide with changes of topic, or occur after passages of a certain length, a length exceeding that of most sentences. The modern political orator deals with this requirement by careful rewriting and delivery. The writer Thoresby uses a technique found in

84 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

conversational speech: the improvisation of long sequences of clauses to sustain speech until a pause is desirable. Crystal’s analysis of group conversation shows syntactic structures of this kind. The informality and group participation characteristic of the conversation recorded by Crystal (1980) distinguish it from oratory, but the techniques used by his conversational speakers to sustain short bursts of speech illuminate the techniques used by Thoresby in his writing. Crystal observes that the conversation he has transcribed resists division into sentences, and identifies three of its features which he sees as responsible for this resistance: Any attempt to analyse this data in terms of sentence structure and function is beset with difficulties from the outset. Sentence identification and classification is a much greater problem here [i.e., in conversational speech] than in any other variety of English. Three factors seem to account for the majority of cases: (a) indeterminate connectivity; (b) indeterminate ellipsis; (c) intercalation of structures. (Crystal, 1980, p. 155) ‘Indeterminate connectivity’ refers to strings of clauses, each introduced by a connective such as ‘and’, which cannot be grouped together in unambiguous sentences, as in this example (I have omitted the prosodic features from Crystal’s account): [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

… he gets on the wrong train and ends up in the wrong place and finds that he’s in a place that’s perfectly quiet and perfectly innocent and there’s no story and so he just writes one and within a week he’s managed to create riots you know. (p. 156)

As Crystal points out, there is no way in which to allocate these clauses decisively to discrete sentences, and ‘the alternative, to call the whole of the above utterance a single complex sentence, is possible, but vacuous’. ‘Indeterminate ellipsis,’ the second feature in Crystal’s account, refers to clauses and phrases with a missing element or elements, in which it is unclear whether the element has been omitted altogether –

Pausing for Breath 85

as in ‘Lunch?’ for ‘Shall we have lunch?’ – or can be found in a neighbouring phrase or clause – as in ‘He went out and bought a paper’, where ‘he’ is not repeated before ‘bought’. Crystal gives this example: [19] a night with Tony Bennet [20] have a nice meal in very plush surroundings [21] very warm nice pleasant […] Is [21] related to [20] by ellipsis (which are), or is it a new sentence with colloquial omission of SV [subject and verb] (it is), or is it an example of ‘postponement’ … (and this is)? … As with [indeterminate connectivity], the question of how many and what kind of sentences we are dealing with seems incapable of receiving a definite answer. (p. 157)

The third obstacle to the imposition of sentence boundaries on conversational language is ‘intercalation of structures,’ a kind of ‘interlacing.’ Crystal provides this example: [22] I’m very suspicious of the press generally [23] and I can tell you [24] because not only I mean that’s one case [25] that you’ve given [26] but also in their reporting of erm affairs foreign affairs [27] because living in Cyprus [28] I’ve seen quite a number of historical events you know From the context, it is plain that the reason for [22] is given in [24–26]. The reason for [23], ie why the speaker is an authority, is given in [27–28]. What we have, therefore, is a structure of the following type: Main Clause A + Main Clause B + Subordinate Clause A + Subordinate Clause B. (p. 158)

The three factors identified by Crystal as impeding analysis of his subjects’ speech in terms of sentence structure – that is, the three features he identifies as characteristic of his subjects’ speech – represent techniques used by the speakers enabling them to produce long sequences of loosely connected clauses, of the kind we saw earlier in Thoresby’s Ducatus Leodiensis. The techniques employed in Thoresby’s long sequences are not necessarily indeterminate connectivity, indeterminate ellipsis, and intercalation of structures; indeed, much of this chapter is devoted to his use of another strategy, relativization, to

86 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

sustain sequences of clauses without pausing. But the underlying pattern, whereby connections are improvised between clauses in sequence rather than clauses being organized into the bounded unit of the sentence, is as characteristic of Thoresby’s prose style as it is of the conversational style of Crystal’s subjects. Thoresby uses the improvisatory clause extensions characteristic of conversation in order to satisfy oratory’s constraints on pausing. I am not invoking here a generalized contrast between Thoresby’s style as ‘spoken’ and the style of writers like Addison as ‘written.’ Biber, pointing out the problems inherent in such a general contrast (see Biber, 1988, chap. 3, for a thorough review of the literature on spoken and written language), observes that many supposed differences and similarities between the spoken and the written are formulated on the basis of faulty comparisons: ‘Several earlier studies find striking differences between speech and writing because they compare very different communicative tasks, such as face-to-face conversation and academic prose; other studies find speech and writing to be nearly the same because they compare similar communicative tasks in the two modes, such as expository articles and public speeches’ (Biber, 1988, p. 53). Biber has developed rigorous and sophisticated methods of avoiding the faulty comparison, which have been successfully applied to the history of English style (Biber and Finegan, 1989; for a detailed critique of their approach, see Preston, 2001). The comparison here between Thoresby’s writing and two particular spoken forms (oratory and informal conversation) is not presented as belonging to a general contrast between the spoken and the written. Rather it is an account of specific features of Thoresby’s style in terms of two specific communicative situations, oratory and informal conversation. In the rest of this chapter, I shall explore Thoresby’s techniques for extending sequences of clauses over much longer passages, and look in more detail at one technique in particular – relativization.

Relative Clauses The discussion of Addison’s and Thoresby’s syntactic strategies has relied so far on a single extract from the Ducatus Leodiensis and shorter extracts from The Spectator. What follows is a more extensive analysis of style and syntax in the writings of Thoresby and Addison, focusing on their uses of relative clauses. Relative clauses are subordinate clauses introduced by a marker such as ‘which’:

Pausing for Breath 87

The bag which she bought last week is already out of fashion. The main clause in this sentence is ‘The bag … is already out of fashion’. The relative (and subordinate) clause is ‘which she bought last week’. Other examples of relative clauses are marked here in italic type: They’ve given the prize to that girl that they all loved. The man who came to the concert was not alone. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved. The discussion of relative clauses presented below is in two sections. The first section provides an analysis of different kinds of relative clause, for example into clauses marked with ‘which’ and those marked with ‘that’, and into restrictive and non-restrictive clauses (these terms are defined later). I hope this breakdown will facilitate a stylistic comparison of Thoresby’s different texts, and also of Thoresby’s and Addison’s writing. The second section is a study of the distribution of relative clauses throughout the samples. It aims to establish whether such clauses are evenly distributed through the texts or appear in clusters, interspersed with long passages which have no relative clauses. I hope my findings will illuminate the different ways in which Thoresby and Addison organize sequences of clauses in their texts. The methods and findings of the first section will be presented in full before discussion of the methods and findings of the second section.

Section One: Variation How can counting relative clauses help to establish whether or not there are stylistic differences between Addison and Thoresby? The answer lies in the variationist method of measuring social and stylistic distinctions in language. The variationist approach was pioneered by William Labov in the 1970s and extended and developed by a wide range of sociolinguists during the second half of the twentieth century (for an influential example of Labov’s work, see Labov, 1977; for an introduction to sociolinguistics, see Trudgill, 2002). Scholars of linguistic variation consider the distribution of linguistic variables in different contexts of speech and/or different social groups. An example of a linguistic variable might be two possible pronunciations of the suffix –ING used in words like ‘singing’. A given speaker might pronounce this as ‘-in’ in

88 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

some social contexts and as ‘-ing’ in others (for the sake of simplicity, I have avoided phonetic symbols). Other speakers might invariably use the first variable, ‘-in’, whereas still others might invariably use the second, ‘-ing’. For example, a young professional woman might say ‘-ing’ in her workplace and ‘-in’ at her parents’ home: workplace: parents’ home:

‘Who’s coming into the conference centre on Friday?’ ‘Are you comin’ in for tea, Dad?’

Her father, on the other hand, might use ‘-in’’ in all contexts. The sociolinguist records statistical occurrences of such variables and plots them against social factors such as class, age, and gender in an attempt to reveal whether the choice of one variable rather than another is affected by the speaker’s social class, age, or gender, or the context of speech. Although this method initially was applied to language in present-day society, the study of linguistic variation has proved invaluable in historical linguistics. Romaine, Devitt, Hope, and Fitzmaurice are among those who have used linguistic variation to identify social and stylistic distinctions both within and between historical periods, and to identify patterns of language change (Romaine, 1982; Devitt, 1989; Hope, 1994; Fitzmaurice, 1994 and 2000). One variable which has been considered by all these scholars is the relative clause marker. Relative clauses have variable forms because the writer or speaker must choose between different ‘markers’ for the clause, such as ‘which’ or ‘that’: The book which he bought was expensive. The book that he bought was expensive. However, relative clause markers are not ideal indicators of sociolinguistic variation, because they are not always fully interchangeable. In the example given earlier, the two variables, ‘-in’ and ‘-ing’, are fully interchangeable with respect to meaning and grammatical function. The choice between the two is therefore likely to be affected by social facts. This is not always true of relative clauses. For example, in present-day English, ‘which’ cannot be used with personal antecedents such as ‘a man’, and ‘who’ can be used only with personal antecedents: * A man which came into the shop yesterday. * The bag who I bought here yesterday.

Pausing for Breath 89

Neither ‘which’ nor ‘who’, therefore, is fully interchangeable with ‘that’ in present-day English (although this was not always the case): A man that came into the shop yesterday. The bag that I bought yesterday. Despite these limitations, relative clause markers have proved useful indicators of stylistic distinctions between texts and writers. Of particular relevance are Fitzmaurice’s studies of relative clause markers (and other variables) in the writings of Addison and his contemporaries. Her findings provide a valuable reference point for my study of relativization and style in Thoresby and Addison. As in the studies of relative clauses mentioned earlier, four possible markers of relativization are considered here (see table 3.1). These four markers are also considered under two broader headings, with WHICH and WHO grouped together as WH relatives, and THAT and 0 grouped together as TH relatives (see table 3.2). The distinction between WH and TH relative clause markers is based on evidence from Romaine and Fitzmaurice that WH are (or were in the era of Addison and Thoresby) more prestigious than TH options (Fitzmaurice, 1994, p. 260; Romaine, 1982, pp. 52, 208). Grouping the four relatives into two categories means that the problem of non-interchangeable markers is to some extent overcome. Both personal and impersonal antecedents can always be marked with either one of the WH markers or one of the TH markers. Certain factors without sociolinguistic or stylistic significance, however, might affect the choice of one marker over another. Romaine considers three such factors, of which the first is the distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. These are her examples of the two kinds of clause: (1) The girl who lives next door to me. (restrictive) (2) Mary Smith, who lives next door to me. (non-restrictive) (Romaine, 1982, p. 81)

The distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses is not always clear-cut, and this, as Hope has remarked, is one disadvantage of using relative clauses for stylistic analysis (Hope, 1994, p. 32–3). But in the samples analysed in this chapter the distinction is clear enough, often enough, to reveal distinct patterns of variation.

90 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Table 3.1 Markers of relativization Relative clause marker

Symbol

In sentence

which

WHICH

The book which arrived yesterday.

who

WHO

The man who came yesterday.

[zero]

0

The man [0] I saw yesterday

that

THAT

The man that I saw yesterday.

Table 3.2 Groups of relative clause markers Relative clause markers

Symbol

which, who

WH

that, 0

TH

The second factor affecting choice of relative clause marker apart from style or social context is the nature of the marker’s antecedent. As indicated above, in present-day English ‘which’ cannot be used with personal antecedents (people). This was not true in earlier periods of English, and an examination of the markers used with personal antecedents and non-personal antecedents can be revealing. Hope, for example, observes the increasing specialization of personal antecedents to WHO in the time of Shakespeare, and Fitzmaurice discusses the (by then comparatively rare) use of WH with personal antecedents by some of Addison’s contemporaries (Fitzmaurice, 1994, p. 261; Hope, 1994, p. 35). The third factor is the grammatical function of the relative clause, that is, whether the relative clause marker refers to the subject or object of the main clause: 1. The man that I saw met Anne. [subject] 2. Anne met the man that I saw. [object] Again, the distribution of markers between different syntactic positions is potentially revealing, although Hope found that ‘the subject/object status of the relative marker was not useful in making a distinction between Shakespeare and Fletcher, and this factor was subsequently discarded’ (Hope, 1994, p. 34).

Pausing for Breath 91

Possible Outcomes of the Variation Analysis I have described Thoresby’s style as one that improvises long sequences of loosely connected clauses. These clauses allow him to avoid lengthy pauses except where they might be desirable for rhetorical reasons. How could examining Thoresby’s use of relative clauses help either to support or to refute this account? There are at least three tests having to do with relativization which, when applied to Thoresby’s writings, could provide interesting evidence. The first test relies on the distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. A restrictive clause is integral to its antecedent; it cannot easily be detached from it. The use of restrictive clauses may therefore imply a higher degree of sentence planning than would the use of non-restrictive clauses. A non-restrictive clause can be improvised at the conclusion of the previous clause without prior planning. The use of non-restrictive clauses may therefore imply the ‘improvisatory’ style ascribed to Thoresby. The account of Addison’s writing as organized in sentences suggests that restrictive clauses might play an important part in his style. If the account of Thoresby as improvising long sequences of clauses is accurate, therefore, it is likely that Thoresby will use a higher proportion of non-restrictive clauses than Addison. Thoresby might also be expected to exhibit little stylistic variation across his different text types. Such lack of variation would be consistent with the conclusions of chapter 2, that Thoresby’s punctuation practice remained the same across a range of texts written for various audiences, and even when the recipient of the text, such as John Sharp, was someone whose approval Thoresby sought and whose punctuation practice was notably different from Thoresby’s own. Thoresby’s underlying model of reading, I suggested, constrained his ability to adapt his practice to that of others, even those he was anxious to imitate and impress. If Thoresby is similarly constrained in adapting his syntactic practice to varying audiences, then there should be little variation in relativization strategies across his various text types. This is perhaps a less satisfactory test than the one concerning restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, as distinctions among text types and their potential audiences are often difficult to establish with any certainty. A third test in which the numerical analysis of relative clauses is potentially helpful is whether Thoresby’s style was more modern or more old-fashioned than that of Addison and other contemporaries. I have characterized Thoresby’s model of the reader as an ‘older’ model, and contrasted it with a ‘newer’ model of the reader revealed in the

92 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

writing of Addison and others. Is Thoresby’s use of relative markers more or less innovative than that of Addison and others (see Hope, 1994 for the use of variation analysis to distinguish more innovative from less innovative writers)? A more old-fashioned practice would be consistent with an older model of reading. Samples and Method of the Variation Analysis Samples were taken from three broad categories of Thoresby’s writing: the diary; the letters; and his printed book, Ducatus Leodiensis. The diary consists of several volumes covering his entire adult life, and it is possible that there is variation among chronological periods of the diary as well as between the diary and the other texts. For that reason, samples were taken at three ten-year intervals (1681, 1691, and 1701), with one further sample from 1703. These should be sufficient to show whether or not the patterns of relativization in the diary changed significantly over time (twenty years) or between diary texts from relatively close periods (1701 and 1703). The letter samples consist of letters to three correspondents from the late 1690s and 1700s: Hans Sloane, the secretary of the Royal Society; John Sharp, the archbishop of York; and the Oxford antiquarian Thomas Hearne. The sample from the Ducatus consists of twenty-seven pages of the appendix, which is a compilation of remarkable human phenomena in the Leeds area, such as instances of multiple births and extreme old age. In addition, a sample was taken from Addison’s Spectator essays. I have selected three genres from Thoresby’s writings, but generic distinctions like the ones made here among diaries, letters, and printed text must be treated with caution. Thoresby’s genres are neither neatly aligned with present-day genres nor neatly self-contained. In chapter 4, for example, I shall argue that the ‘familiar letter’ for Thoresby can cover widely varying communicative acts, from a request for scholarly information addressed to a fellow antiquarian, to a plea for spiritual succour addressed to the archbishop of York. Chapter 5 will show that the ‘spiritual diary’ can include ecstatic prayers as well as dry lists of daily actions, and that such a diary was likely to be circulated to a known audience. Finally, Thoresby’s antiquarian labour of love, the Ducatus Leodiensis, contains a diverse range of forms, from notes on family pedigrees to the occasional prayer. Forms of address, expectations of audience, and structures of social rank were so different in Thoresby’s world from those in our own that it can be difficult to plot his texts on even a simple scale from formal to informal with any confidence. Any evidence of variation among these three text types must therefore be treated with caution.

Pausing for Breath 93

I have not included all the available data on relative clauses. Specifically, I do not present data on whether the relative clause markers have personal or non-personal antecedents, nor on whether the antecedents are in subject or object position. That is because I found only one possible example of WHICH used with a personal antecedent, and dividing the data according to grammatical function would have diluted the samples too far. For the same reason, I have excluded the following kinds of construction: ‘which’ or ‘whom’ preceded by a preposition The most expensive book of which I have heard. ‘the’ followed by ‘which’ He is said to be at sea, the which is more likely because he always hoped to be a sailor. clauses introduced by ‘whose’ It is her sister whose clothes are so much admired. Results of the Variation Analysis Table 3.3 expresses the results in raw numbers, and table 3.4 presents the same figures per 2,000 words to enable comparison of samples of different lengths. As evident in table 3.3, the Thoresby samples show a marked preference for non-restrictive over restrictive clauses, and, as suggested earlier, this result is consistent with the account of Thoresby as improvising long sequences of clauses up to a topic boundary rather than organizing text into relatively planned sentences. Such an interpretation is strengthened by the comparison with Addison, who, as Fitzmaurice has also found, shows a striking preference for restrictive over nonrestrictive clauses (Fitzmaurice, 1994, p. 263). The difference between the two writers can be seen more clearly in Table 3.4. Sixty per cent of Addison’s relative clauses are restrictive. In contrast, in all but one of the Thoresby samples restrictive clauses make up less than 50 per cent of the relative clauses, and in one sample the percentage of restrictive clauses falls as low as 18 per cent (see table 3.5). Addison’s preference for restrictive and Thoresby’s for non-restrictive clauses, then, offer some support for my account of a stylistic difference between the two writers. What of variation across genres? I suggested above that Thoresby might be stylistically inflexible, unable to accommodate his writing to that of many of his contemporaries because he did not share their underlying model of reading. It is not the case that

94 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Table 3.3 Number of relative clauses in samples from Thoresby and Addison Restrictive

Non-restrictive

WHO WHICH

n=

No. of words in sample

111

14,479

0 THAT WHO WHICH THAT

Diary (1681)

4

2

17 27

23

38

0

Diary (1691)

2

2

6 17

7

48

4

86

9888

Diary (1701)

2

1

3

3

20

21

1

51

9689

Diary (1703)

3

5

9 16

35

41

0

109

8699

Sharp

2

8

8 43

5

41

0

107

7176

Sloane

4

2

13 21

18

50

1

109

5853

Hearne

4

4

19 33

22

49

4

135

9316

Ducatus

18

5

8 35

103

53

4

226

15,127

Addison

30

40

25 77

38

55

20

285

14,458

Sources: See the appendix.

Table 3.4 Number of relative clauses per 2000 words in samples from Thoresby and Addison Restrictive

Non-restrictive THAT

WHO

WHICH

Total*

WHO

WHICH

0

Diary (1681)

1

0

2

4

3

5

THAT 0

15

Diary (1691)

0

0

1

3

1

10

1

17

Diary (1701)

0

0

1

1

4

4

0

11

Diary (1703)

1

1

2

4

8

9

0

25

Sharp

1

2

2

12

1

11

0

30

Sloane

1

1

4

7

6

17

0

37

Hearne

1

1

4

7

5

11

1

29

Ducatus

2

1

1

5

14

7

1

30

Addison

4

6

3

11

5

8

3

39

*Some totals are affected by rounding. Sources: See the appendix.

Pausing for Breath 95 Table 3.5 Percentage of restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses in samples from Thoresby and Addison Restrictive

Non-restrictive

Diary (1681)

45

55

Diary (1691)

31

69

Diary (1701)

18

82

Diary (1703)

30

70

Sharp

57

43

Sloane

37

63

Hearne

45

55

Ducatus

29

71

Addison

60

40

Sources: See the appendix.

Thoresby’s use of relative clauses never varies across his genres: principally, the diaries contain lower levels of relativization overall than the letters and the Ducatus. Beyond that, however, there are no unambiguous patterns of variation across genres. This finding provides a small degree of support for the hypothesis that Thoresby’s style is relatively inflexible and does not vary according to text genre or audience. The numbers also offer some support for the suggestion that Thoresby was more old-fashioned in his patterns of relativization than Addison. Thoresby has a strong tendency to reserve WHICH and WHO for nonrestrictive clauses and THAT for restrictive clauses. Indeed, THAT is only rarely used for non-restrictive clauses in the Thoresby samples. WHICH and WHO appear rather more frequently in restrictive clauses than THAT does in non-restrictive clauses, but are nonetheless clearly preferred for non-restrictive clauses. Eighty per cent of Thoresby’s restrictive clauses are marked by TH, whereas 98 per cent of his non-restrictive clauses are marked by WH. Addison’s practice differs from Thoresby’s in this respect, as he is far less specialized in his allocation of WH and TH markers to non-restrictive and restrictive clauses. Addison shows some preference for TH markers in restrictive clauses and WH markers in non-restrictive ones, but this preference is far less marked than Thoresby’s, as table 3.6 shows.

96 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Table 3.6 Allocation (by percentage) of WH and TH relative clause markers in samples from Thoresby and Addison Restrictive

Non-restrictive

WH

TH

WH

Thoresby (all samples)

20

80

98

TH 2

Addison

41

59

82

18

Sources: See the appendix.

Addison’s relatively flexible use of WH markers in restrictive clauses has been discussed by Fitzmaurice. Indeed, her 1994 sample of Addison’s writing, also taken from the Spectator essays, even reveals a preference for WH over TH markers in restrictive clauses; 55 per cent of the restrictive clauses in that sample are marked by WH (Fitzmaurice, 1994, pp. 261–2). Fitzmaurice accounts for Addison’s attractiveness to latereighteenth-century prescriptivists by demonstrating that his style is a successful compromise between innovation and correctness, where correctness is defined by prescriptive rules. She does so by comparing his essays with sample writings by a broad selection of his contemporaries – Shaftesbury, Swift, Steele, Boyer, Whiston, and Centlivre. A full comparison of her figures with mine is not possible: she looks only at restrictive clauses, whereas I look at both restrictive and non-restrictive; she includes distinctions between personal and non-personal antecedents, which I do not; and she considers markers such as ‘when’ and ‘where’, which I have excluded. But Addison’s flexibility with respect to choice of WH and TH relative clause markers features in her findings as well as mine: it is one of a group of features which (Fitzmaurice argues) characterize Addison as innovative without seeming to be incorrect: ‘Modernity and correctness (propriety) are thus balanced in Addison’s prose to the extent that his language appears to occupy the centre of a stylistic continuum. In fact, if we plot aspects of innovation (e.g. incidence of do in negative sentences) against propriety (e.g. incidence of wh- pronouns) for all the authors in my corpus, Addison turns out to be distinctly innovative while maintaining the middle ground in propriety’ (pp. 266–7). Fitzmaurice’s assessment is based in part on Addison’s practice of avoiding clauses with a zero relative marker (a form proscribed by the prescriptivists who later used Addison as a model) while remaining

Pausing for Breath 97

flexible with respect to choice of relative marker. In this area, Thoresby is comparable to Addison in ‘correctness’: he too uses few zero relative clauses. But Thoresby is less flexible than Addison in the use of WH and TH relative markers; he lacks the ‘ease’ and ‘familiarity’ for which Addison was praised and which distinguishes his style as innovative (p. 265). Thoresby’s more rigid allocation of relative clause markers could be described as old-fashioned, and, as suggested above, is consistent with an account of Thoresby as adhering to an older model of reading while Addison adopts a newer one. This characterization of Addison as an innovator in contrast to the more old-fashioned Thoresby is also confirmed by their respective preferences for restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. Once again, table 3.5 shows Thoresby’s striking preference for non-restrictive clauses and Addison’s preference for restrictive clauses. Fitzmaurice observes that Addison (like his fellow Spectator author Steele) uses a noticeably higher number of restrictive clauses than the rest of the peer group whose writings she samples: ‘It is evident that [Addison] and Steele are inclined to use the construction more than their contemporaries, Swift and Shaftesbury. Indeed, the extent to which Addison’s usage in particular surpasses them is very striking – we might think especially so since the wh-relative markers are highly prestigious and, more significantly, indicative of formal or distinctly literary styles’ (Fitzmaurice, 1994, p. 263). Addison’s preference for restrictive clauses, then, and his flexibility with respect to choice of WH and TH markers distinguish him from contemporaries such as Swift and Shaftesbury as well as from Thoresby. Fitzmaurice is cautious about using these figures to make stylistic generalizations; as she points out, to understand the stylistic significance of these differences, ‘it would be necessary to examine the patterns most favoured by Swift and Shaftesbury in some detail – a task well beyond the scope of the present paper’ (p. 263). But Fitzmaurice does make several stylistic observations about these writers which both recall Thoresby and strengthen the impression that Thoresby, like Swift and Shaftesbury, is stylistically different from the more innovative Addison. Her remarks on Swift and Shaftesbury can be applied with equal justice to Thoresby: [Swift and Shaftesbury] tend to write sentences with heavily punctuated phrase boundaries. Further, the punctuation conventions very rarely distinguish between the strength of syntactic boundaries, so that restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses are separated from their antecedents

98 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator in identical ways. The consequence of this pausal style of punctuation is that it is sometimes difficult to identify the antecedent of a relative marker. (Fitzmaurice, 1994, p. 262) The structure of the sentence used by Swift and Shaftesbury is an aid to speculation. Unlike the Spectator writers, they tend to write long sentences with heavy noun phrases, typically concatenated rather than subordinated … In this light, Addison’s use of the relative clause has the effect of differentiating the weight of information, making the sentence structure more transparent. (pp. 263–4)

These observations recall Thoresby’s prose, with its punctuation which confuses a present-day reader and does not distinguish between syntactic boundaries; its ambiguity in the relationships between phrases and between clauses and antecedents (described above in relation to Crystal’s findings); and its long sentences without ‘transparent’ structure. In a second study, which includes a comparison between Addison and Swift, Fitzmaurice presents figures for both restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses which indicate that Swift’s overall levels of relativization are not significantly lower than Addison’s (Fitzmaurice, 2000, pp. 213–14). This finding in turn may suggest that the numerical disparity between these two writers in the 1994 study is attributable to Addison’s preference for restrictive over non-restrictive clauses (the second study considers a different text type – letters – so direct comparisons with the first can be made only cautiously). Thoresby’s sharing of stylistic features with contemporaries such as Swift and Shaftesbury as described by Fitzmaurice, and the dissimilarities between all three writers and the more innovative Addison, strengthens the impression that Thoresby was a more old-fashioned writer than Addison.

Section Two: Distribution Analysis So far I have discussed Thoresby’s use of four relative clause markers; his preference for non-restrictive over restrictive clauses; and the differences in practice in his diaries, his letters, and his book, Ducatus Leodiensis. I have suggested that his specialization of WH markers to non-restrictive and TH markers to restrictive clauses, and his overall preference for nonrestrictive clauses, distinguishes him from Addison, who is more flexible in the use of WH and TH markers and who prefers restrictive clauses. A comparison of my findings with Fitzmaurice’s suggests that Thoresby’s

Pausing for Breath 99

style resembles that of contemporaries like Swift and Shaftesbury who are more old-fashioned than Addison. The comparison between Thoresby and Addison is enriched by analysis of relative clause distribution. Distribution does not appear to feature in other studies of relativization; I have developed it here in an attempt to test an impressionistic observation. A reading of the Ducatus, Thoresby’s lengthiest sustained text, leaves the impression that relative clauses appear in clusters – that a number of relative clauses in swift succession are followed by long stretches of text containing no relative clauses. An example of such a cluster is offered by the passage from the Ducatus quoted earlier in this chapter, in which a succession of non-restrictive relative clause markers are used as links in a long sequence of clauses. The accuracy of this impression can be tested by a numerical analysis of the distribution of relative clauses. If relative clauses are used in clusters in this manner, a closer examination of individual clusters could either refute or support the account of Thoresby as improvising long sequences of clauses in order to avoid pausing before topic boundaries. In addition, any difference between the distribution in Thoresby and the distribution in Addison might support the contrast revealed by the variation analysis and the comparison of restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. Samples and Method of the Distribution Analysis The samples are those used above from Addison’s essays and Thoresby’s Ducatus. In order to produce figures which are continuous (and manageable), I have grouped relative clause markers according to whether there are one to ten or eleven to twenty words (and so on) between markers, rather than listing the exact number of words in each instance, as in this example: which whilst the Dog catch’d hold of, he with his right Hand twitch’d the Dog hard by the Throat, and stop’d his Wind, which made him loose his hold. (Thoresby, 1715a, p. 615)

Here, there are twenty-two words before the second ‘which’, so this interval falls into the ‘21–30’ category. At the openings of texts, I have counted the number of words before the first relative clause marker. In this respect, the Addison and Thoresby samples are not strictly equivalent, because the sample from the Ducatus consists of a continuous text (despite some omissions, such as family trees, footnotes, and quotations from other writers), whereas the Addison sample consists of a group of

100 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Table 3.7 Number of words between relative clause markers or before the first relative clause marker in samples from Thoresby’s Ducatus and Addison’s Spectator essays No. of words

Ducatus Addison

Ducatus Addison

Ducatus Addison

1–10

29

33

141–50

4

2

281–90

1

0

11–20

27

58

151–60

4

2

291–300

1

0

21–30

33

32

161–70

2

2

301–10

1

0

31–40

18

33

171–80

3

0

311–20

0

0

41–50

17

41

181–90

3

0

321–30

0

0

51–60

20

18

191–200

0

1

331–40

1

0

61–70

11

14

201–10

2

0

341–50

0

0

71–80

7

13

211–20

0

0

351–60

0

0

81–90

9

10

221–30

2

0

361–70

0

0

91–100

7

16

231–40

1

0

371–80

0

0

101–10

6

13

241–50

1

0

381–90

0

0

111–20

8

4

251–60

0

0

391–400

1

0

121–30

2

4

261–70

2

0

131–40

2

6

271–80

1

0 n= no. of relative clauses total no. of words

226

302

226

285

15,127 14,458

Sources: See the appendix.

essays which were not published continuously. This means that there are more instances in the Addison sample than in the Thoresby of an opening stretch of text before the first relative clause marker. The markers themselves are not included in the word count, as the use of zero markers would distort the figures. As in the earlier analysis, only four relative clause markers are considered, WHO, WHICH, THAT, and 0. Table 3.7 compares the distribution of relative clauses in the samples from the Ducatus and from Addison. As the table shows, both writers tend to cluster relative clauses together, with a high proportion occurring in relatively quick succession followed by lengthy stretches in which there are no relative clauses at all. It is not the case, then, that Thoresby’s and Addison’s distributions of relative clauses can be contrasted simply, as

Pausing for Breath 101 70

Frequency

60 50 40

Ducatus Addison

30 20 10 0

1

–

10 30 50 70 90 110 130 150 170 190 210 230 250 270 290 310 330 350 370 390 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 21 41 61 81 01 21 41 61 81 01 21 41 61 81 01 21 41 61 81 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3

Figure 3.1. Number of words before a relative marker in Thoresby and Addison.

uneven versus even. Thoresby’s distribution, however, is even more skewed towards clusters than Addison’s, as figure 3.1 illustrates, and the clusters in each writer appear for different reasons. It is worth looking in more detail at some examples of clusters in each writer. Detailed Analysis of Thoresby’s Clusters of Relative Clauses I have argued that Thoresby aims to avoid pauses except at topic boundaries, and that relativization is one strategy he adopts in order to accomplish this. A detailed examination of the clusters in the sample suggests that division by topic rather than by sentence can indeed account for the skewed distribution of relative clauses. Such an examination reveals, for example, that clusters sometimes occur because certain topics are dealt with at greater length than others. These longer topics need more support from strategies like relativization if the sequence of clauses is to be extended to the topic boundary. In the Ducatus sample, the subject matter is organized by topic, and a topic is what relates to a particular person or family. The sample records rare human phenomena in the Leeds area which at first seem too diverse to allow for organization by subject, in that they include such things as children born to elderly mothers, multiple births, oldfashioned ways of forming surnames, and providential punishments for sexual promiscuity. But close examination reveals that Thoresby treats all information relating to a single person (or sometimes family) as a discrete topic, and that he does not pause until each such topic is

102 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

concluded. Where he has a lot to say on a given person/topic, he prolongs the sequence of clauses, often using relativization, until the topic is concluded. Only then can there be a long pause, indicated by a full stop or semicolon. This prolongation of topic gives rise to several of the clusters of relative clauses which skew the distribution. On the other hand, where there is a series of topics which do not require much elaboration, he has less need to use strategies like relativization in order to avoid pausing. A series of short topics may produce a passage with no relative clauses at all. Both patterns are illustrated in this excerpt from the Ducatus (relative clause markers are highlighted in boldface type): Mr. Joseph Boyse the noted N.C. Minister of Dublin, was one of the sixteen Children of Mr. Matthew Boyse of Leeds. Dr. Ralph Bathurst Dean of Bath and Wells, was one of seventeen of his Father (Vide Pedigree, pag. 13.) sixteen of which lived to be Men and Women. Mr. George Perrot of Leeds, Merchant, is the sixteenth (or eighteenth) of the old Lady Perrot’s, who is yet living, a comely grave Matron, and had the Satisfaction to see one Son Mayor of Hull the last Year, and another Lord-Mayor of York this, as his Father had formerly been. Frances, Wife of the Learned Dr. George Hickes, late Dean of Worcester was Daughter of Mr. Charles Mallory, the Son or Grandson (I remember not whether) of Sir John Mallory, who was attended to his Grave by twelve Sons and five Daughters. Armigell Wade Esq; had (by his two Wives) twenty Children of whom the noted Sir William Wade was eldest. But Elizabeth the Mother of Jasper Blythman Esq; Recorder of Leeds, was one of the twenty Children of Sir John Stanhope, that were born and baptized (besides two that were stillborn) before either he or his Lady were forty Years of Age. (Thoresby, 1715a, pp. 607–8)

There are six full stops in the passage, and each occurs at the conclusion of a set of remarks concerning a particular person. No full stops occur before the discussion of the person, with or without family, is complete. For example, when Thoresby has said all that he has to say relating to Joseph Boyse, he uses a full stop. Similarly, he uses full stops at the conclusion of his information concerning Dr Ralph Bathurst, Mr George Perrot with Lady Perrot, Frances Hickes with her family – including her husband, father, and grand- (or great-grand-)father – Armigell Wade, and Elizabeth Blythman with her family. Some of the topics are comparatively short, and in these cases the full stop appears after relatively few words, as in the case of Armigell Wade and Joseph Boyse. Some, where there is more to say in connection with a particular individual, are

Pausing for Breath 103

longer. These topics require an unbroken sequence of clauses to convey all the relevant information before they can be concluded with a pause (marked by a full stop). One such longer topic is George Perrot, of whom Thoresby has more to say than he does of Armigell Wade or Joseph Boyse: the passage is extended so that the topic can be sustained without a long pause. The extension of the sequence of clauses produces some potentially confusing ellipses (omitted words or phrases); it is not immediately clear, for example, whether it is Mr George Perrot or Lady Perrot who ‘had the Satisfaction’. The passage also contains a relative clause: ‘Mr. George Perrot of Leeds, Merchant, is the sixteenth (or eighteenth) of the old Lady Perrot’s, who is yet living, a comely grave Matron, and had the Satisfaction to see one Son Mayor of Hull the last Year, and another Lord-Mayor of York this, as his Father had formerly been.’ The treatment of persons or families as discrete topics and the restriction of pauses to topic boundaries account for Thoresby’s use of relativization and other strategies to prolong a sequence of clauses until a topic is concluded. Longer topics in the sample, where there is a considerable amount to say about a particular person or family, often contain clusters of relative clauses. The difference between single long topics and series of short topics, therefore, can account at least in part for the skewed distribution of relative clauses in the Thoresby sample. The division of topics by person rather than according to length also confirms earlier findings, such as the preponderance of non-restrictive clauses introduced by WHO in the Thoresby sample (almost half the total number of relative clauses in the sample). Thoresby’s general preference for non-restrictive clauses also fits an ‘improvisatory’ style of relativization, as noted earlier, and the frequency of WHO markers fits the organization of topics around people. What of the unexpectedly long stretches in the sample where there are no relative clauses? Some of these passages do feature long topics which are sustained by means of subordinate clauses. But instead of the four relative clause markers indicated in this analysis, they might contain constructions like ‘of which’ or clauses beginning with ‘whose’ or ‘where’. For example, in one passage of 295 words which contains none of the four markers but does feature a comparatively lengthy and involved topic, Thoresby avoids long pauses before topic boundaries by using ‘of whom’ and ‘of which’: Matthew Bentley of Leeds, has had nineteen children (but by two Wives) of which, Eleven (by Mary his second Wife, yet living) were born in the space of twelve Years and a Quarter, and were all single Births, some of them now living, lusty young Men. (Thoresby, 1715a, p. 607)

104 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

Elsewhere the absence of relative clause markers can be accounted for by the appearance of a topic which lends itself to coordination rather than subordination (one including narrative, for example). The quotation below is a lengthy narrative passage about Mr Thomas Sharp which contains relative clauses after the introductory marker (in boldface type): The like I find in the Diary of a most affectionate Friend of the late pious and learned Mr. Thomas Sharp, who died at Leedes 27 Aug. 1693. about seven in the Morning, at which very Moment his distant Friend fell into a bitter Agony of Tears upon the Apprehension that he was then dying, the Passion was so vehement and surprizing, that he was not able to cloth himself, but for some Time stood naked by the Bed-side, as he started out of it, till being somewhat abated he dispatched a Messenger, and thinking the Return tedious, hasted thither himself, found him so lately dead at that very Moment, that the Corps was not then wound up in the Shroud. (p. 614)

Here the topic is Mr Sharp’s friend, who serves as an instance of ‘sympathy,’ the general subject under discussion in this section of the text. There is some use of subordination (for example, ‘at which very Moment’) to avoid a pause before the conclusion of the topic. But there is also a sequence of narrative clauses in chronological order, connected by ‘but’, ‘till’, and ‘and’: he was not able to cloth himself but for some Time stood naked by the Bed-side till … he dispatched a Messenger and … hasted thither himself

A narrative like this may lend itself to coordination rather more than other topics, and can therefore be sustained with less support from relative clauses. The other type of passage to make less use of relativization is the sequence of short topics, each separated by a pause, like this one: There is in some Persons as great an Antipathy against particular Animals, as in others against some Sort of Food. Germanicus could not endure the Sight or Voice of a Cock. A man of Hasnia, otherwise of good Courage, yet could not see a Dog, (though never so small a one,) but he was

Pausing for Breath 105 affrighted, and seized with Convulsions in his left Hand. The Persian Magi were possessed with an extream hatred to Mice. (p. 614)

Again, the passage identifies topics with individuals, with ‘Germanicus’, ‘a man of Hasnia’, and ‘The Persian Magi’ each constituting a separate topic. But there is little to say on any of these topics and therefore no need for a sequence of clauses. Accordingly, there is less need for relative clauses (or other kinds of subordination). The skewed distribution of relative clauses in the Thoresby sample can therefore be accounted for by reference to topic organization. Thoresby treats particular individuals or families as single topics. He is reluctant to use long pauses before topic boundaries, so where a topic is lengthy he extends the sequence of clauses so as to avoid pausing, and often uses relative clauses in order to do so. Where a topic is long but consists largely of narrative, he may be more likely to use coordination than subordination and therefore has less need of relative clauses. Where there is a sequence of short topics, he pauses after each one rather than linking the topics together and therefore has less need of relative clauses here too. Detailed Analysis of Addison’s Clusters of Relatives Whereas Thoresby’s skewed distribution arises from topic organization, Addison’s can be accounted for by reference to sentence organization. Fitzmaurice, contrasting Addison’s approach to sentences with those of Swift and Shaftesbury, describes his approach as follows: Addison’s use of the relative clause has the effect of differentiating the weight of information, making the sentence structure more transparent [as in this] quotation: As I love to see everything that is new, I once prevail’d upon my Friend, Will. Honeycomb to carry me along with him to one of these Travell’d Ladies, desiring him, at the same time, to present me as a Foreigner who could not speak English, that so I might not be obliged to bear a Part in the Discourse. (Spectator, No. 45: 192). While still more heavily punctuated than any present-day English sentence, the weight of the clauses in this sentence is varied by a combination of relative clauses and infinitive subordination. This strategy enables Addison to foreground the main (narrative) point of the sentence. (Fitzmaurice, 1994, p. 264)

106 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

This use of relativization (and other strategies) to highlight the ‘point’ of the sentence helps to explain the clustering of relative clauses in my Addison sample. Here are some further examples of the use of relatives to highlight a sentence’s point (relative clause markers are in boldface type): [1.] She was likewise (as I afterwards found) a greater Valetudinarian than any [0] I had ever met with. [2.] This project, as I have since heard, is post-poned ’till the SummerSeason; when it is thought the Coolness that proceeds from Fountains and Cascades will be more acceptable and refreshing to People of Quality. [3.] Upon my Return home, I fell into a profound Contemplation on the Evils that attend these superstitious Follies of Mankind; how they subject us to imaginary Afflictions, and additional Sorrows that do not properly come within our Lot. (Bond, 1965, vol. 1, pp. 15, 24, 33)

In each sentence, the relative clause or clauses allow the most important point to be highlighted. In sentence 1, the relative allows ‘She’ and ‘Valetudinarian’ to be foregrounded rather than ‘I’ (compare ‘I had never met with a greater Valetudinarian’, for example). In sentence 2, ‘Coolness’ is emphasized rather than ‘Fountains and Cascades’. In sentence 3, ‘Evils’ and ‘Sorrows’ are more prominent than ‘Follies’ or ‘Lot’. So where Thoresby uses (predominantly) non-restrictive clauses to extend topics and avoid pausing, Addison uses (predominantly) restrictive clauses to organize sentences and foreground central information. How might this use of relativization – to ‘make the sentence structure more transparent,’ in Fitzmaurice’s words – be responsible for the clustering of relative clauses in the Addison sample? One explanation can be found in Addison’s attachment to parallelism. Addison often uses restrictive relative clauses in a sequence of parallel clauses, and the repetition of the syntactic structure helps make the sentence structure more transparent: I shall therefore acquaint my Reader, that if he has started any Hint which he is not able to pursue, if he has met with any surprizing Story which he does not know how to tell, if he has discovered any epidemical Vice which has escaped my Observation, or has heard of any uncommon Vertue which he would desire to publish; in short, if he has any Materials that can furnish out an innocent Diversion, I shall promise him my best Assistance in the working of them up for a publick Entertainment. (p. 73)

Pausing for Breath 107 By this Means the soft Notes that were adapted to Pity in the Italian, fell upon the Word Rage in the English; and the angry Sounds that were tuned to Rage in the Original, were made to express Pity in the Translation. (p. 80)

As table 3.7 shows, the intervals between relative clauses in these examples fall into the most common category in Addison’s distribution, eleven to twenty words. This ‘11–20’ category is heavily dominated by restrictive clauses (almost 80 per cent of the clauses are restrictive). Addison’s preference for restrictive clauses and his tendency to cluster may have a shared cause in his use of parallelism. What of those lengthier passages without relative clauses which appear to the right in figure 3.1? There are far fewer of these than in the Thoresby sample, and even the longest of them is half the length of the longest such passage in Thoresby. In the Thoresby sample, there are forty-two passages of more than 110 words without relative clauses, and in the Addison sample only twenty-one such passages. The longest passage without a relative clause in the Addison sample falls into the table 3.7 category ‘191–200’-word interval. In the Thoresby sample, the longest such passage is in the ‘391–400’ category. As do Thoresby’s, some of Addison’s longer passages without relative markers include forms of relativization which I have excluded, such as ‘from whom’ and ‘whose’. The use of ‘that’ as a subordinator with ellipsis is also found in the lengthier passages without relative clauses: There have been so many Flights of them let loose in this Opera, that it is feared the House will never get rid of them; and that in other Plays, they may make their Entrance in very wrong and improper Scenes. (p. 26)

Here the ellipsis of ‘it is feared’ means that the next clause must use ‘that’ as a (non-relative) subordinator and so precludes the use of relative clauses. In other instances, however, the use of parallelism accounts for the absence of relative clauses as successfully as it accounts for their clustered presence elsewhere: The Truth of it is, the finest Writers among the Modern Italians, express themselves in such a florid form of Words, and such tedious Circumlocutions, as are used by none but Pedants in our own Country; and at the

108 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator same time, fill their Writings with such poor Imaginations and Conceits, as our Youths are ashamed of, before they have been Two Years at the University. (p. 26)

Here the parallelism is based on the use of ‘such … as are’. Once the first structure is in place, the parallelism would be broken if relative clauses were introduced. Other parallel structures are simpler: The Toilet is their great Scene of Business, and the right adjusting of their Hair the principal Employment of their Lives … Their more serious Occupations are Sowing and Embroidery, and their greatest Drudgery the Preparation of Jellies and Sweetmeats. (p. 46)

The parallel structures ‘The … is’ and ‘Their … are/is’ involve ellipsis of ‘is’ in the second clause, and here it would be even more difficult to introduce a relative clause without breaking the sequence of parallel structures. Parallelism, therefore, accounts for both why there are passages in the Addison sample with many relatives and why there are passages with none. Addison’s skewed distribution, then, has causes different from Thoresby’s. Thoresby uses topics to organize his text, and is reluctant to introduce long pauses before topic boundaries. He therefore prefers non-restrictive clauses and, in a text which treats persons as topics, the non-restrictive WHO markers. Where he avoids relatives altogether, it is often because he is dealing either with narrative, in which pauses can be avoided by using coordination rather than subordination, or with short topics which do not need to be sustained by extempore relativization. Addison, on the other hand, uses relative clauses to organize sentence structure, to foreground the most important information and, in effect, make the structure transparent. He therefore prefers restrictive to nonrestrictive relative clauses, and has fewer (and shorter) sustained passages without relatives than Thoresby. Where passages without relatives do occur in Addison, they often have to do with his use of parallelism to aid foregrounding and transparency. Thoresby’s prose style struck his contemporary William King as comically short of breath. The effect of breathlessness is owing to his avoidance of long pauses: instead of pausing to indicate sentence boundaries as Addison does, Thoresby organizes his far less frequent pauses around topic boundaries. In this respect his strategy resembles that of the public

Pausing for Breath 109

speaker. Where a topic is naturally short (an individual in the Ducatus about whom there is little to be said, for example), Thoresby has no need to extend a sequence of clauses in order to avoid a lengthy pause; he can pause without difficulty at the topic boundary. Where a topic is longer, he extends a sequence of loosely connected clauses so as to avoid a long pause until the topic is concluded. One strategy he uses to achieve this end is relativization. His relative clauses are therefore far more tightly clustered than might be expected, with some short passages dense with relative clauses and other, much longer passages having no relative clauses at all. Whereas some longer topics are extended by means of relative clauses, those with a more narrative character are sometimes extended by means of coordination, and in a sequence of short topics there is less need for extended clause sequences. Addison’s patterns of relativization differ from Thoresby’s. Unlike Thoresby, he shows a marked preference for restrictive clauses, and he is also far more flexible than Thoresby in his use of WH and TH relative clause markers. Addison’s distribution of relative clauses is, like Thoresby’s, skewed, though to a lesser degree and for different reasons. Whereas Thoresby organizes his text around topics, Addison organizes his around sentences, using long pauses (usually full stops) to indicate the autonomy of the syntactic unit, and the sentence itself to highlight the most important information in it. The parallelism he employs as a strategy in this organization accounts to some extent for the clustering of relative clauses in his text. His preference for restrictive over nonrestrictive clauses, in marked contrast to the preference of his contemporaries, including Thoresby, is related to the priority he gives to sentence organization. Non-restrictive clauses predominate in Thoresby’s writing because they belong to an improvisatory approach. Thoresby’s priority is to avoid pauses before topic boundaries, since such pauses would be liable to misinterpretation or interruption by his hearer. Addison’s priority is to make sure that the information he wishes to convey is arranged as clearly as possible; for him there is no penalty attached to the use of long pauses. The difference between Thoresby’s syntactic organization and Addison’s, as revealed by this analysis of their use of relative clauses, can be seen as a difference between writers who hold contrasting models of reading: for the one, an oratorical model, in which the reader is a speaker, and for the other, a conversational model, in which the reader is a hearer. The conversational model plays a key role in developments in letter writing in the period, as we shall see in the next chapter.

4

Writing Polite Letters

In chapters 2 and 3, I discussed the relation between patterns of pausing and contrasting models of reading. In chapter 2, I suggested that punctuation practice changed in the period around the turn to the eighteenth century because a writer who thinks of the reader as a hearer can use pauses more liberally than one who thinks of the reader as a speaker, pauses being less liable to misinterpretation by a reader who reads as a hearer. In chapter 3, drawing on present-day research on oratory, I contrasted Thoresby’s use of relative clauses with Addison’s and argued that a writer who conceives of his or her reader as a speaker will avoid long pauses except at topic boundaries and therefore produce long strings of loosely attached clauses, whereas a writer who conceives of his or her reader as a hearer will write in what a present-day reader recognizes as sentences, that is, autonomous units bounded by pauses. In this chapter, I use Thoresby’s letters to illustrate a broader and more generic change in writing practices related to the transition from a reader-as-speaker model to a reader-as-hearer model. This is the change in letter writing which accompanied the rise of ‘politeness.’ ‘Politeness’ here refers to a specific code of conduct which dominated moral and social thinking throughout the long eighteenth century. The code’s best-known promoter, or even formulator, was Anthony Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (see Klein, 1994a). Shaftesbury, one of many who placed special emphasis on polite language, prescribed rules for both polite speech and polite writing (see Klein, 1994b). ‘Politeness’ is also the name used by the linguists Brown and Levinson for their influential sociolinguistic theory (Brown and Levinson, 1987), which has proved useful to a number of scholars examining the language in the period, most notably Fitzmaurice (2002a and 2002b). In this chapter, however,

Writing Polite Letters 111

‘politeness’ refers to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moral code rather to than the twentieth-century linguistic theory, unless otherwise indicated. My aim is to demonstrate the interaction between politeness and a new reading model in the period. The recreational conversation was seen as the defining speech genre of politeness, and the familiar letter was its written counterpart. Letter writing, then, was a crucial site of transition from the oratorical style associated with a model of the reader as a speaker to the conversational style encouraged by the newer model of the reader as a hearer. Indeed, it could even be said that truly polite letter writing was possible only for a writer who conceived of the reader as a hearer. As in earlier chapters, I shall use Thoresby as a test case of someone who was motivated to change his writing style in keeping with the times, but was not fully competent to do so because his model of the reader differed from that of his more innovative contemporaries. The letters discussed in this chapter were exchanged between Thoresby and John Sharp, the archbishop of York, in the 1690s and early 1700s. The chapter begins with a discussion of three key features of politeness and their implications for writing. This is followed by a brief discussion of the difficulties inherent in treating letters as a genre, and an account of some existing scholarly work on letter writing in the period. The background to the Thoresby-Sharp correspondence is provided, and my approach to analysing it is described. My analysis uncovers a conversational model of letter writing on Sharp’s part and an oratorical model on Thoresby’s – models which correspond with the contrasting ones of the reader as a hearer and as a speaker as presented in earlier chapters.

Politeness The emergence of politeness during the eighteenth century has engaged scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including cultural history (for example, Brewer, 1997, p. 111 and elsewhere), the history of ideas and of philosophy (Klein, 1994a), social history (Vickery, 2003, pp. 197–202 and elsewhere), and the history of science (Shapin, 1994, chap. 7, although Shapin writes of ‘civility’ rather than ‘politeness’). Linguistic historians have also been interested in the rise of politeness (see, among others, the work of Fitzmaurice, 2002a and 2002b; Klein, 1994b; and McIntosh, 1994). As this range of expertise suggests, politeness is a broad topic. Brewer writes that politeness was ‘at once a philosophy, a

112 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

way of life to which one committed oneself, and the means to understand oneself and one’s place in the world. Embracing every aspect of manners and morals, it was a complete system of conduct’ (Brewer, 1997, p. 101). For our purposes, three features of the politeness which was cultivated are salient: the ability to detach oneself from one’s opinions; the desire to please one’s conversational partners; and an assumption of equality between gentlemen, irrespective of differences in rank, degree of wealth, religious background, and so on. The first of these – the ability to detach oneself from one’s opinions – gave rise to a preference for detached disputation rather than impassioned polemic. The polite conversationalist did not force his or her opinions on the interlocutor, but instead was able to detach his or her personal identity from the opinions expressed. Brewer has accounted for this aspect of politeness by referring to the violent civil and religious strife which preceded its rise in England: ‘The aim of politeness was to reach an accommodation with the complexities of modern life and to replace political zeal and religious bigotry with mutual tolerance and understanding. The means of achieving this was a manner of conversing and dealing with people which, by teaching one to regulate one’s passions and to cultivate good taste, would enable a person to realize what was in the public interest and for the general good’ (Brewer, 1997, p. 102). Politeness required the conversationalist to discipline himself or herself in the manner of expressing opinions, to ‘regulate the passions’ rather than expressing opinions zealously. And, as Brewer’s account makes clear, this discipline was required not simply by the arbitrary demands of fashion, but by morality, its purpose a furthering of ‘the public interest’ and ‘the general good.’ Klein describes the polite conversationalist’s conduct in similar though more specific terms: ‘One did one’s best to give others a favourable platform: one did not correct all errors that slipped into conversation: one did not ask questions that conversants could not answer’ (Klein, 1994, p. 34). The conversationalist’s aim, then, was not to persuade the other party or parties, but to let them express their opinions as easily as possible, regardless of whether or not the opinions were shared by all. At the time, this recommendation that passionately held opinions be put aside in conversation was new, and to some extent suspect. For some contemporaries, detaching oneself from one’s opinions seemed hard to distinguish from hypocrisy. As Brewer points out, ‘The sort of impression you made on other people, how you appeared to them, acquired new importance. Morality became embedded in the world of appearances’

Writing Polite Letters 113

(Brewer, 1997, p. 106). And the ‘world of appearances’ could be a troubling place: ‘The requirement that polite people shape their feelings according to their effect on others created a profound anxiety about their identity. Was there some genuine interior self, or was one only an artifact of polite society?’ (p. 112). The requirement that speakers detach themselves from deeply held opinions by offering a platform to the opposition and moderating their own expressions was, then, a profound and potentially troubling change for many who aspired to politeness. For some, such as Thoresby, it was morally challenging, and perhaps hardly comprehensible. In seventeenth-century conversation, the stakes had often been high; men’s souls and the good of the nation hung in the balance, as speakers strove to persuade or bully their hearers into agreement. Against that background the restraint and detachment of the polite could be seen as working to trivialize what were crucial issues. The ability to separate oneself from one’s opinions is related to the second feature of politeness discussed here, the desire to please. The temperate style encouraged by separating believers from beliefs was essential for anyone who wished to please his or her interlocutors, regardless of whether or not both parties were in agreement. And far from expressing an amoral attempt to replace moral zeal with pleasantry, the desire to please was seen as a requirement of morality: ‘Personal conduct and the conduct of others were to be judged not according to the conformity to universal moral laws but on the basis of how they affected others. The sort of impression you made on other people, how you appeared to them, acquired new importance. Morality became embedded in the world of appearances … Politeness was about creating “an admirable effect”: the desire to please and to be admired was a prime motive’ (Brewer, 1997, pp. 106–7). So Thoresby and others who were negotiating the transition not simply between different social classes and religious groupings but between the world of vehement dispute and that of polite discussion were under a moral as well as a social obligation to be polite. As we shall see, they could not necessarily achieve politeness easily or at will. Polite gentlemen – this is the third feature of interest to us – were also required to take a new approach to social mobility. Rank and hierarchy, of course, were still to be respected; part of pleasing one’s interlocutor, or at any rate of not displeasing him or her, lay in accurate observation of the requirements of rank. At the same time, politeness allowed for social proximity, and even intimacy, between people of very different rank, such as Thoresby and his often high-ranking and distinguished

114 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

Royal Society acquaintances. Thoresby’s own son regarded his father’s circle of acquaintance as more distinguished than he had any right to expect (see the essay on Thoresby in the Biographica Britannica). This new social mobility is understandable in the light of Shapin’s observation, in his account of scientific history in the period, that the efficient exchange of scientific knowledge was predicated on an assumption that potential participants were gentlemen (Shapin, 1994, chap. 3 and elsewhere). In other words, gentility was a requirement. Yet in some ways this requirement lowered the bar of social entry rather than raising it. Thoresby’s case shows that definitions of gentility were flexible enough to allow someone like him, raised as a merchant and a Nonconformist, to qualify. Acquiring a coat of arms as a guarantee of his gentility did not prove too difficult. And once the circle of virtuosi had accepted a newly arrived gentleman, there was a striking equality in polite circles among all those on the inside, from parvenus like Thoresby to aristocrats like Robert Boyle and great churchmen like John Sharp. As Klein points out, the requirement of gentility constituted an aid to social mobility and not a barrier: ‘It makes sense that a related phenomenon of this period was the seizing of the cultural initiative from the crown by the gentlemanly elite … This was not a society in which social boundaries were being tended, or could be, with maximal tidiness, especially when we think of those segments of the population whose paths intersected in the urban and commercial zone’ (Klein, 1994a, p. 36). Yet the changing rules of social engagement among polite people could be as much a hazard as an opportunity for the newcomer. The upwardly mobile might be unpractised in addressing their social superiors as equals, and their social anxiety might make them excessively deferential rather than comfortably familiar. Thoresby’s letters show evidence of such a tendency.

Politeness and Language Politeness has interested a number of historians of language. Some have connected it with the rise of linguistic ‘correctness’ (see, for example, Klein, 1994b). Others relate it to sociolinguistic differentiation, and to subsequent language change in an era of social mobility (McIntosh, 1994). For the purposes of this chapter, two linguistic features of politeness are crucial. The first is the premium placed by the polite on conversation as a model for discourse. As Klein observes, ‘“Politeness” was, in general, a condition of refined social interaction, but social “politeness”

Writing Polite Letters 115

was paradigmatically conversational … “Politeness” was, among other things a theory of conversational manners … The art of conversation was the technique for negotiating between the poles of self and other’ (Klein, 1994a, p. 33). The second feature is the metaphor, entrenched within writing on politeness, of writing as conversation. Brewer observes that ‘the Spectator expressed itself in an intimate manner – as if speaking conversationally to the reader; the published essay was the public version of a private conversation, a place in which familiar discussion was revealed’ (Brewer, 1997, p. 104). Good letter writing, more than any other kind of writing, was likened to conversation. Of course the metaphor of letter as conversation was not new. As Earle remarks, ‘Already a standard trope in seventeenth-century letter manuals, the metaphor was attributed by Erasmus to Saint Jerome, whose own epistolary skills were sufficient to make the mute text speak’ (Earle, 1999, p. 9). Yet politeness gave it a new lease of life, as McIntosh, among others, has demonstrated, discussing the conversational character of Samuel Johnson’s letters (McIntosh, 1998, pp. 130–7). Shaftesbury exalted the letter above other genres precisely because of its affinity to conversation: ‘Shaftesbury assigned centrality to the genre of the letter. Since the letter, he thought, was a continuation of conversation at one remove from conversation itself, it was the literary form best able to carry the particular burdens of conversation, namely, the apt amalgamation of seriousness with informality’ (Klein, 1994a, p. 35).

The Letter as a Genre The letter, then, was considered the quintessentially polite written form because it most closely resembled conversation, and conversation was the quintessentially polite spoken form. The letter also neatly illustrates the change in reading model from that of the reader as a speaker to that of the reader as a hearer. Letters can be conceived of as within two contrasting (and imagined) settings: the conversation and the oration. Conversation and oration differ in the relationship between or among their participants. Whereas a conversation typically involves a small group, often as small as two, an oration involves a larger group, too large to be worth numbering (I shall refer to groups of this kind as an ‘undifferentiated audience’). Conversation differs from oration also in the power relations between speaker and hearer; it tends towards equality between or among the participants, whereas oration places the power of utterance in the mouth of the speaker. Moreover, the two notional speakers have

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different aims. The conversational speaker, seated in intimate proximity to the other participant(s), might be expected to aim to please in what he or she says; conversation might be thought of as both presupposing and reinforcing friendship. Indeed, the relation between conversation and the art of pleasing is made explicit in the analyses of politeness cited above. The speaker of an oration has a different aim, not so much to please particular individuals as to persuade, or to arouse emotion in, an undifferentiated audience. The first speaker, aiming to please, is likely to avoid extreme emotive content in order to avoid disturbing his fellow conversationalists, whereas the second speaker, aiming to persuade or rouse, is inclined to exaggerate the emotive content of his speech. The first speaker would likely be moderate in expressing opinions so as to avoid giving offence, whereas the second speaker would likely exaggerate his or her opinions so as to persuade. The first speaker would tailor his or her words to particular interlocutors, and the second speaker might repeat words which had proved effective with previous audiences. The eighteenth-century shift away from oratory and towards conversation as a model for discourse encouraged development of precisely the three features of politeness discussed above. Detaching oneself from one’s opinions is natural in a conversation, but problematic for the orator. Seeking to please one’s interlocutor(s) is also natural in a conversation, but less important to the orator than moving or rousing the audience. And an assumption of equality between or among interlocutors is an aid to the conversationalist, but not necessarily of interest to the orator. Here, then, it is possible to see the history of politeness and the history of reading converging. It could even be said that polite discourse became possible only because of the change in reading practices. How is this contrast in models of discourse translated to the written word? The letter writer whose imagined setting is conversation conceives of the reader as the other party in a conversation, that is, as a hearer. The letter writer whose imagined setting is oration conceives of his or her text as something to be declared to a third party, to an undifferentiated audience, by the reader, who is thus conceived of as a speaker. And while the first writer is likely to avoid extreme emotive content and instead to moderate the expression of opinions and tailor the text for a particular individual, the second letter writer is likely to heighten emotive content, to exaggerate opinions, and to create a text suitable for a range of individuals. Precisely this difference between conversation and oration as models of discourse in letter writing can be seen in the correspondence of Sharp and Thoresby.

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Before analysis of the letters can proceed, some reservations about treating letters as a genre must be noted. Analysis of letters from this (or any) period can sometimes give the impression that a letter is invariably a coherent text directed at a single recipient. McIntosh, for example, analyses Johnson’s letters using the model of a conversation between two constant participants, thereby suggesting that it is safe to assume the letters were composed in the expectation that they would have only one reader, in this case Hester Thrale (see, for example, McIntosh, 1998, p. 134). Tieken-Boon van Ostade also assumes that the stated recipient is the only relevant reader for determining the degree of intimacy in a letter (Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 1999). In their study of address formulae in early modern English letters, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg work on the assumption that only the explicitly named recipient is relevant, and like many other scholars they assume a meaningful distinction between personal or familiar letters and public or formal ones (see, for example, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, 1995, p. 547). Yet, as Barton and Hall observe, even informal letter writing can involve more than two people, depending on the surrounding culture (Barton and Hall, 2000, p. 3). I suggested in chapter 2 that Thoresby wrote to Hans Sloane ostensibly as a personal friend, but knowing that Sloane selected items from his friends’ correspondence for publication in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. As we shall see, few, if any, of Thoresby’s letters can be safely regarded as having been written with a single reader in mind. Nor can they easily be described as either ‘public’ or ‘private.’ As I suggested in chapter 3, parts of Thoresby’s letters clearly were written in the expectation that they would be circulated, whereas other parts seem particularly directed at Archbishop John Sharp. The letters cannot easily be fitted into generic categories such as ‘private letter,’ nor can they be analysed as consistently directed at a single reader. Because of the generic complexity of letters, and the potential multiplicity of readers for different sections of even a single letter, my analysis below will proceed rather tentatively. I shall consider sections within Thoresby’s letters independently, rather than treating each letter as a single unified text, let alone dealing with the full set of letters as a homogeneous corpus. This series of snapshots from the letters will illustrate Thoresby’s inability to adapt his letter writing to the new principles of politeness, and his adherence to a model of the reader as a speaker rather than to one of the reader as a hearer.

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Background to the Thoresby-Sharp Correspondence Thoresby’s acquaintance with Sharp began in the 1690s, when Thoresby was expanding his circle of antiquarian friends. Their early correspondence concentrates on their collections of antique coins. Later, when he was moving from the Presbyterians towards conformity with the established church, Thoresby turned to Sharp for advice and support. Sharp encouraged Thoresby to break with his Nonconformist neighbours and offered sympathy for the difficulties involved. Some years later, Thoresby continued to write to Sharp on spiritual matters, but he also initiated new subjects; the last letter considered here is a request for help with patronage in establishing one of his sons in a career. Wherever possible, I have used manuscript sources; Sharp’s letters to Thoresby and one of Thoresby’s to Sharp, however, are taken from an early-nineteenth-century printed source (Hunter, 1832), and their spelling and punctuation should be treated with caution. My analysis concentrates on the following areas: opening and closing greetings; the giving and receiving of compliments; the circulation of letters and confidential subject matter; and the use of letter writing to pursue patronage.

Opening and Closing Greetings Some of the most detailed work on early modern letter writing in recent years has examined the role of conventional greetings at the opening and closing of letters. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg have examined salutations as an index of intimacy in letters, and their findings suggest that English letter writing in the early modern period shows a levelling of rank and a reduction in social distance between writer and addressee. They find evidence of a change, for example, in the way higher-class writers address lower-class recipients over the course of the century from 1550 to 1650: ‘Noblemen and bishops address their inferiors with a similar formula of positive orientation ((right) trusty and (right) well-beloved) as the monarchs, either without a noun or with friend, cousin, servant or sir as head of the phrase … A century later, the data contain instances where a gentleman is addressed by a nobleman as Mr + surname’ (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, 1995, p. 578). Tieken-Boon van Ostade, meanwhile, has examined salutations in the letters of John Gay. She concludes that the eighteenth-century letter writer could express varying degrees of intimacy with ‘the creative use of the epistolary conventions’ (Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 1999, p. 98). In

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particular, she finds instances in which the intimacy between writer and addressee overrides importance in social rank – a situation that allows the writer use a salutation which otherwise would be too informal for a higher-ranking addressee (p. 101). These findings – that the expression of rank in openings and closings grew less pronounced in the early modern period, and that intimacy in eighteenth-century letter writing can allow the writer to ignore differences in rank in openings and closings – are consistent with the ‘politeness’ described earlier, in which friendship and equality among gentlemen was central. What, then, should be expected from Thoresby’s opening and closing greetings? Certainly, he was sufficiently educated to understand that a bishop should be greeted, in a formal and conventional style, as ‘your Grace’ or ‘his Grace’ (this sort of information was available in manuals; see, for example, Hill, 1699, pp. 98–101). But if he had absorbed the culture of politeness, he might allow this style to be overriden by the intimacy between two gentlemen who have kindly feelings for each other. This is not the case. The openings and closing of Thoresby’s letters to Sharp give no sign that friendship and equality between the correspondents is assumed. Indeed, there are hints in the correspondence that Sharp considered Thoresby inappropriately, perhaps even gauchely, deferential and that he would have welcomed a ‘polite’ assumption of equality between gentlemen. Of the fourteen surviving manuscript letters to Sharp, plus the two which survive in print, eight open with the formula ‘May it please Your Grace’ and eight with ‘My Lord’. There is little evidence that one of these openings was regarded as more formal than the other, nor do they vary according to the content or date of composition. In all sixteen letters, the closing is the same: ‘Your Grace’s most obliged, humble Servant’. Thoresby did not, then, according to the surviving evidence, take advantage of his increasingly intimate relationship with Sharp to use some of the more intimate openings and closings which Gay, for example, was happy to use even to social superiors, once he felt that the relationship was close enough. Given his exalted rank relative to Thoresby, it is only to be expected that Sharp would use less formal greetings in his replies. Of nine letters in print, four open with ‘Good sir’, four with ‘Good Mr Thoresby’, and one simply with ‘Sir’. Again, it is hard to detect any correlation between these various openings and the content of the letters. They are similar to the openings used by many, perhaps most, of Thoresby’s friendlier correspondents, such as John Killingbeck, the vicar of Leeds (although

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they do not match the intimate ‘Dear Ralpho’ of his friend George Plaxton; see Hunter, 1832, vol. 2). Sharp’s closing greetings are also similar to those used by Thoresby’s more intimate acquaintances, being all variations on ‘Your affectionate friend’, such as Your most affectionate friend and humble servant (1697) Your affectionate friend (1699) Your very affectionate friend (1710) (Hunter, 1832, vols 1 and 2)

These closings are comparable in intimacy with John Killingbeck’s ‘Your most affectionate and faithful friend’. Again, there is no sign in Sharp’s closings of variation according to the content of the letter, the date it was written, or any other feature. There is, then, an asymmetry between the two correspondents, with Thoresby’s openings and closings more distant and Sharp’s more intimate, a reflection of the asymmetry in rank between the two men. Yet, as I have outlined above, there is evidence from contemporaries like Gay that Thoresby did have the option of using a more informal greeting even to someone superior in rank if he felt that the friendship warranted it. And there are signs that Sharp considered Thoresby’s formality somewhat excessive – as breaching, that is, the code of politeness which permitted equality between gentlemen. Sharp’s secretary took the opportunity of a business letter to Thoresby to hint as much: ‘You have taken occasion by excusing a supposed neglect towards Mr. Sharp to expresse greater respects for him than his modesty could have born upon the place. He must impute this your excesse to him to the readynesse you have always shewn in paying civilities to my Lord Archbp’ (letter from Sharp’s secretary, later his son-in-law, 10 October 1696; Lancaster, 1912, p. 49).

Paying Compliments The expression ‘civilities’ in the letter from Sharp’s secretary points to another feature of Thoresby’s letters, one which reveals the contrasting notions of their relationship held by the two men. The correspondence contains a number of examples of each man paying a compliment to the other. For Sharp, however, the compliments serve as an opportunity to create intimacy, whereas for Thoresby they allow him to create distance. In the following passage, Sharp teases Thoresby while showing Thoresby that he values his company and friendship:

Writing Polite Letters 121 I have one thing to take ill of you, viz. that you were at York about a week ago (or a fortnight) and came not to see me. I saw one at prayers, that put me in mind of you; for I thought, at a distance, he was very like you, but I did not think it was you, till afterwards I was told so. If I had known it, I would not have suffered you to have gone out of the church without speaking to you. (16 March 1697; Hunter, 1832, vol. 1, p. 274)

Sharp considers the two of them to be on such a footing of affection that he can say frankly and light-heartedly that he was hurt by Thoresby’s failure to call on him while in York. The assumption, of course, is that Thoresby is Sharp’s equal, that he can call on the archbishop without appointment and in the knowledge that the archbishop will want his company despite their difference in rank. Sharp’s compliment, then, conforms with the culture of politeness. This is not an isolated example of an assumption on Sharp’s part of polite equality irrespective of rank; elsewhere, for example, he adopts the pose of a scholarly inferior to his correspondent, hesitating to send Thoresby his notes on antiquarian coins because ‘I had not thought them worthy of your sight’ (14 December 1698; Hunter, 1832, vol. 1, p. 342). Thoresby’s compliments to Sharp, on the other hand, create distance. In the following passage, Thoresby acknowledges Sharp’s gift of some ‘Cases of Conscience,’ texts discussing the ethics of conformity to the established church: The great condescension & affectionate concern yt your Grace has express’d for me, obliges me to acquaint Your Lordship, that having perused more of the Cases, I am somewhat more easy in my own mind. (20 May 1699; GRO MS D3549 6/1/T13)

Thoresby talks of condescension on Sharp’s side and obligation on his own, thereby emphasizing rather than minimizing the inequality between them. And Thoresby’s reply to Sharp’s modest assessment of his study of antique coins, quoted above as an example of his intimate approach to Thoresby, reinforces distance: The more distinctly I peruse your Lordships most accurate Accurate Observations upon our English Silver Coins, the more I am ravished with them, they giv me that Satisfaction in some Scruples yt I tho’t had been impossible to hav rec’d either from the most criticall Author living, or most Judicious of former ages. (7 January 1699; GRO MS D3549 6/5/5)

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Here, the distance is created by hyperbole, as well as by formal vocabulary and complex sentence structure. In the way they open and close letters, then, and in their use of compliments, Sharp and Thoresby reveal different attitudes to the inequality of rank between them. If it was to be expected that Sharp would be rather less formal and Thoresby rather more formal, their opening formulae and compliments show that Sharp is a great deal less formal than might be expected and Thoresby a great deal more formal. Sharp adopts the polite way of thinking whereby considerations of rank can be minimized or put aside between gentlemen; Thoresby does not, and takes every opportunity to emphasize his deference to Sharp.

Circulation and Confidential Subject Matter Yet Thoresby is not always incapable of ignoring the disparity in their ranks. There are passages in the letters which show great informality, in being composed in note form and using abbreviations. These passages resemble those discussed in chapter 2 with reference to the circulation of personal letters among virtuosi and Fellows of the Royal Society. They list brief queries about antique coins in Thoresby’s collection, made in the hope that fellow collectors can answer them, and so as to acquaint those others with the contents of the collection. The transition from formal address to informal list can be seen in a longer excerpt from the letter quoted from above: The more distinctly I peruse your Lordships most accurate Accurate Observations upon our English Silver Coins, the more I am ravished with them, they giv me that Satisfaction in some Scruples yt I tho’t had been impossible to hav rec’d either from the most criticall Author living, or most Judicious of former ages, But your Grace has an excellent Collection, and which is far better, the skill to make the best Improvement of them. I have upon this occasion taken a more nice Survey of mine from Wil.m the Conquere to Q. Eliza: & have found some remaining difficultys, wherein (when your Lordship can have a few spare minutes) I should be glad to receive further Satisfaction. 1. The Pieces/ Whether the Three half penny piece of Q. Elizs. be not bad money, mine is so bad, that (but for the Indenture) I am ready to ascribe it to Edw. 6th. To wm. the Inscription, E.D.G.ROSA.SINE.SPINA, suits as wel,? Q. Whethe any of Q. Elizs. farthings be extant? (7 January 1699; GRO D3549 6/5/5)

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As in the letters to Hans Sloane discussed in chapter 2, the queries are in note form; for example, ‘Whether’ rather than ‘I wonder whether’ or ‘I ask whether’. And as in the Sloane letters, Thoresby signals items in his collection by beginning sentences with ‘I have’. But the passage opens with a carefully constructed compliment, and instead of queries and comments in a series of short notes, there is a series of interdependent clauses, and instead of abbreviation of words like ‘query’ to a single letter, there is a careful replacement of ‘accurate’ with ‘Accurate’. There is, then, an abrupt shift in implied addressee as Thoresby moves from compliment to queries. The queries can be copied and circulated among a wide range of collectors, including those unknown to Thoresby himself; the compliment is directed specifically at Sharp. So Thoresby does share with Sharp a common set of assumptions about the circulation of correspondence, and about the appropriate style of writing for an audience which is on the one hand specialized (gentlemen collectors of curiosities) and on the other hand undifferentiated (Thoresby does not know which individuals he might be addressing). In other areas, however, there is a marked contrast evident between Sharp’s and Thoresby’s ideas as to what constitutes a style and a subject matter suitable for different audiences. Both men are aware that letters may be circulated, and that it is unwise to put in a letter anything one would wish to remain confidential. Thoresby shows this awareness in the letter to Hans Sloane, discussed in chapter 2, in which he writes, ‘but this only to your self’ (BL MS 4039, f. 136). Sharp silently assumes more than once that Thoresby actually wishes him to pass his letters on to others: I took care not only to send your letter to the Bishop of Sarum, but also to introduce and recommend you to him by a letter of mine. (6 June 1699; Hunter, 1832, vol. 1, p. 370) I received your letter, and because I could not answer it myself, I sent it to Mr. Nelson, whose answer (which I received this morning) I here send to you. I likewise here send you an original letter of Mr. Nelson a post or two before. (7 September 1708; Hunter, 1832, vol. 2, p. 110)

But although they share the assumption that letters, even those which can be described as ‘familiar’ or ‘personal,’ are often, if not always, potentially public texts, they do not have the same assumptions as to the

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kind of subject matter suitable for such public texts. In particular, Thoresby is uninhibited in his confessions of religious anxiety to his friend and adviser, and Sharp, though eager to help if he can, believes that a letter is too public a forum for effusions of this kind. In the following letter, he responds to Thoresby’s pleas for solace and advice, but also expresses his reluctance to carry on doing so by letter. He implies that Thoresby has expressed a similar view of letters, but the fact that he needs to say anything on the matter implies a difference in assumptions between the two men: And if you think that I am capable of contributing any thing to the satisfaction of any doubts or scruples that you have, I do assure you I shall be as ready to serve you, as any friend you have in the world. But I am of the mind (which you intimate in your letter you are of) that matters of this nature are fitter for a conversation than a short letter. (26 April 1699; Hunter, 1832, vol. 1, p. 366)

Thoresby, however, persists in writing about his spiritual crisis in detail and at length: What wil become of me, if I should really be left to that formality & deadness, wch: my own naughty heart is so prone to, and what if my poor posterity (who being in their Infancy, I am yet more concern’d for than myself) being influenced by my example should degenerate, and the vitals of Religion be neglected by the descendants of those, some of whose Predecessors hav been signally eminent for true Piety. (20 May 1699; GRO MS D3549 6/1/T13)

Sharp gives in to Thoresby’s clear desire for a response to what he has written, but makes it clear that what he has to say is exceptional and not to be passed on to any other reader: What I now tell you of my own experience, (and I beg your pardon for it, though, indeed, I would not have said this to any one but you, nor to you but on the present occasion). (6 June 1699; Hunter, 1832, vol. 1, p. 371)

It is interesting that Sharp apologizes for breaching his unwritten rule respecting spiritual confidences in letters; his concern is not simply that Thoresby might pass on the letter to someone else, but that he might actually be affronted by receiving a letter of this kind. But despite his

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manifest admiration for Sharp, and his clear desire for Sharp’s good opinion, Thoresby persists in sending him long, detailed, and impassioned accounts of his spiritual experiences. What lies behind these different assumptions as to the content suitable for letters, and behind Thoresby’s unbending adherence to his own ways in the face of Sharp’s clear discomfort? One clue is provided in the short quotation from Sharp above, in which he writes of ‘telling’ Thoresby ‘now’, ‘on the present occasion’, and not ‘to any one but you’. These terms imply that Sharp’s model in his writing is the polite conversation between two intimates. Sharp is conscious that letters tend to be circulated and to become public, and hence he is generally cautious about what can be discussed in letters. But when certain subjects do arise, such as the spiritual life of one of the correspondents, the letter changes as a form. It is automatically limited to two people, writer and reader; the usual possibility of circulation is discounted. That is why his writing creates the illusion that writing and reading are happening simultaneously, by its use of the terms ‘now’ and ‘on the present occasion’, and its freer use of first and second person pronouns. The passage resembles the contribution of a participant in the course of a polite conversation (see McIntosh, 1998, pp. 130–7, for similar conversational features in Johnson’s letters). The reader ‘hears’ the writer address him intimately because the letter is based on a model of the reader as a hearer rather than as a speaker. Thoresby’s letters, by contrast, even when they deal with matters which a present-day reader would regard as intimate and private, are based on a different model. Thoresby is always, to some extent, writing for an undifferentiated audience of one kind or another; that is, he is always making speeches rather than conversing. His model is perhaps most apparent when his letters are seemingly at their most confessional, as in the second part of this letter: May it please your Grace After a due acknowledgmt of your Graces favours to me wn. Last at Bishopthorp, this is to request yt your Lordship would permit Mr Skipper to transcribe the Attorney Geneals opinion concerning my Uncle Idles benefaction to Holbeck chapel for tho I remember (I think) the substance, yet in a matter of so great moment I dare not depend upon my memory / In that informativ convers your Grace was pleased to favour me with in ye Library, there was one expression (that I should have made a good minister) that was oftener than once in my tho’ts in the silent night, & in my

126 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator walks as I came home, over the moors, I was more in the meditation of it than is convenient to mention, ’tis afflictiv to think yt there seems to have been once a possibility of having been usefull in my Generation, & yt ’tis now irrecoverably lapst. (29 April 1704; GRO MS 3549 6/6/5)

It is tempting to read the second part of this passage as a confession of private feelings from one man to another. The solidus and long space which separate the business matters which open the letter from the discussion of feelings further on might seem to support such an interpretation. So might the apparently non-functional character of Thoresby’s account of his inner life: he is not, here, asking for particular advice or help from Sharp, but expressing feelings – as he might if he had no other outlet and sought the emotional relief of confiding in a friend, for example. Yet this interpretation would be mistaken. Thoresby composed the passage with care and seems to have taken the same sort of pride in it as in a fine piece of oratory, as is borne out by his inclusion of a very similar passage quoted from his diary in his autobiography. The diary and autobiography are texts which were directed at members of his own family and perhaps an even wider audience: His Grace was pleased to tell me in a most affecting manner, I should have made a good minister& … wch. was in my thoughts in y e silent night, and in my return over the moores. (quotation from the diary of 1704 in the autobiography; YAS MS26, p. 205)

The passage, then, was not written solely for the ear of Sharp, but composed as a piece of fine writing for an undifferentiated audience, one which embraced both social inferiors (such as his sons) and social superiors like Sharp. This approach to letter writing is evident throughout Thoresby’s letters to Sharp. They contain some abrupt changes in style or content signalling a change in audience, such as the transition from formal compliment to informal list of queries mentioned earlier. But these should not be regarded as representing a switching on Thoresby’s part from a one-to-one addressing of Sharp to an addressing of a wider, undifferentiated audience. On the contrary, Thoresby’s audience is always to some extent an undifferentiated one, although its nature varies. His compliment to Sharp might be addressed in the hearing of other church dignitaries, for example, and his confessional account of spiritual and professional regrets is capable of being directed at family

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members or spiritual advisers indifferently. In other words, the different sections of the letters assume a reader who is a speaker, one who reads the text aloud to a variety of potential audiences.

Seeking Patronage In one letter, Thoresby seeks Sharp’s help in winning the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke, who Thoresby hoped would sponsor his son in a career in the navy. The letter is addressed to Sharp himself, but a number of features make it plain that Thoresby conceived of it as an address to Pembroke: My Lord The Earl of Pembroke being, to the great joy of the nation, made Lord High Admiral of England, I am advised by many of my best friends, and particularly Mr. Thornton, (who presents his humble duty to your Grace) to make use of this good providence by applying to his Lordship for some place, that may enable me more comfortably to provide for my poor family; and I am downright told, that I shall be defective in my duty if I sit still: this indeed is a moving argument, for though I could as to myself, contentedly sit down with butter-milk and brown bread, rather than be troublesome to my friends, yet I confess, that this for my poor children very sensibly affects me; and indeed, I am so apt to be overwhelmed with anxiety and melancholy when I considerately think of it, that I dare scarce think at all, much less so often as becomes a man of common prudence, of my domestic affairs. (23 November 1708; Hunter, 1832, vol. 2, pp. 124–6)

As in the studied compliments to Sharp, the opening compliment to Pembroke involves somewhat complex sentence structure, in particular the delay of the main clause. The syntactic choices also help to create distance and formality, for example through the use of the passive: ‘I am advised by many of my best friends’ and ‘I am downright told’. The vocabulary suggesting that Thoresby is prosecuting a case also implies oratory rather than conversation – ‘this is indeed a moving argument’ – as do the rhetorical pleas for compassion for Thoresby’s ‘poor children’ and the dramatic claim that he could ‘contentedly sit down with buttermilk and brown bread, rather than be troublesome to my friends’. The letter concludes with a declaration of emotion so excessive that the writer claims inability to continue. This claim too suggests spoken

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oratory rather than intimate writing; in writing it is possible to wait until the emotion subsides and then resume writing: But these thoughts do too pressingly move the affections, that I must break off abruptly, only begging your Lordship’s prayers for Your Grace’s most obliged, humble servant, R. TH.

Moreover, although the letter concludes with Thoresby too moved to carry on, it immediately continues with a rather lengthy postscript. It seems clear that the main part of the text is a speech to be read aloud to Pembroke, and that the postscript is for Sharp alone: I beg the favour of a line to direct me what is the best method to use; if it was summer, I should make a personal address to his Lordship, but severe cold much affects my head. I beg pardon for my boldness herein; I could not use this freedom to discover my circumstances to any other person, except Mr. Thornton.

The suspicion that Thoresby wants Sharp to read the main part of the letter aloud to Pembroke is confirmed by the fact that Sharp does exactly that, ignoring Thoresby’s own claim that he ‘could not use this freedom’ to reveal his finances to anyone but Sharp and Mr Thornton: Good Mr. Thoresby I had your letter by the last post but one. I am truly ready to do you any service I can; and to show you that I am so, I took the boldness this night to read your letter to my Lord Pembroke. (3 December 1708; Hunter, 1832, vol. 2, p. 128)

So what appears at first to be a letter intended for silent, or at least confidential, reading by a single correspondent turns out to be a text intended for reading aloud by that correspondent to a third party. Here the model of the reader as a speaker is explicit. Throughout Thoresby’s correspondence with Sharp there is a clash between Sharp’s view of letter writing as modelled on polite conversation, and Thoresby’s view that letters consist of sections of text which can be performed to various audiences. Thoresby conceives of his reader as a speaker rather than a hearer. His model of reading can be

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seen as having constituted a barrier to his adopting the culture of politeness favoured by those whose acceptance he most desired. The culture of politeness did not arise, of course, from the change in reading model I have described. But polite writing, in which writer and reader are conceived of as conversing, would be difficult, if not impossible, for a writer adhering to the older model of reading. So one could argue that, if the rise of silent reading did not create the culture of politeness, perhaps it did enable the development of polite writing.

5

The Birth of the Recreational Diary

In this chapter, I analyse a number of diary genres from the seventeenth century, and contrast them with a new kind of diary which emerged at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The seventeenth-century genres include travel diaries, astrological diaries, and public diaries, although much of the chapter is devoted to the pious diary, with a detailed discussion of Thoresby’s diary. All these genres shared an underlying approach to diary writing, an approach which can be called functionalist. The diarists recorded events or observations, and their doing so served a function, whether that function was spiritual selfinspection, historical chronicle, or astrological research. The diaries were public texts in that they were often written in the knowledge that they would be circulated later, and in being modelled on the diaries which had been circulated to the diarist. Instructions on how and why to keep such a diary were available. This kind of diary – consisting of listed events or observations, bound by generic requirements, and meant for public circulation – is very different from the new kind which emerged at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the recreational diary. The recreational diary was written as a continuous narrative for an implied reader. It lacked the clear sense of function of the earlier diaries, and found its raison d’être in the pleasures of conversation between writer and implied reader. The recreational diary was written as though for a friend, featured narrative coherence within entries, and covered all kinds of topics related to the diarist’s life. The change in diary writing is consistent with the change from the older to the newer model of reading. The older diary was available for inspection by a wide range of real readers, such as children and neighbours, just as the older model of reading produced writing intended for

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public performance to real listeners. Writing a diary of this kind was a public act, aimed not at entertaining but informing. Its lists of events or observations enabled the listener to make an assessment of the diarist or of the material recorded by the diarist. The newer diary, however, involved the diarist in a personal narrative. He or she became a narrator and therefore was obliged to construct a notional location for himself or herself from which he or she could address an imagined reader. Recreational diary writing becomes a form of conversational address to an imagined reader, a private exchange involving only two parties rather than a public record available for inspection.

The Seventeenth-Century Diary: A Public Form Scholars writing on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century diary writing have sometimes described the diaries of the period in terms of the ‘construction’ of personal identity (see, for example, Todd, 1992, p. 238; Webster, 1996; or McGiffert, 1994). Yet these analyses are anachronistic, based on present-day concepts of the self and of the genre which are not necessarily applicable to earlier periods. The metaphors of ‘construction’ and ‘self-fashioning’ rely on two underlying concepts: that there is part of the self doing the ‘constructing’ or ‘fashioning,’ and that there is another part which is the stuff to be constructed or fashioned. This version of the self is similar to that which the philosopher Charles Taylor ascribes to Locke as a new development: The disengagement both from the activities of thought and from our unreflecting desires and tastes allows us to see ourselves as objects of far-reaching reformation. Rational control can extend to the re-creation of our habits, and hence of ourselves … The subject who can take this kind of radical stance of disengagement to himself or herself with a view to remaking, is what I want to call the ‘punctual’ self. To take this stance is to identify oneself with the power to objectify and remake, and by this act to distance oneself from all the particular features which are objects of potential change. (Taylor, Charles, 1989, p. 171)

The descriptions of diaries as sites for self-fashioning rely, then, on a Lockean view of the self, a view which may seem familiar to us but which the diarists themselves may have found alien. Moreover, some scholarly accounts also imply that the diaries of the period, whatever their writers might have claimed, served chiefly psychological purposes. But in many,

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perhaps most, of the diaries surviving from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the diarists have a clear idea of their diary writing as serving a specific function. Where the stated function is self-examination, as in pious diaries, the ‘self’ in question is not the Lockean self, which is difficult if not impossible to know because of its potential for remaking. Rather it is a self which can be understood by anyone, including the subject, by the paying of close attention to its recorded actions and thoughts. A pious diarist who wishes to observe his or her depth of piety in any given week can do so by noting down his or her actions and thoughts and observing them in the same way he or she would observe a set of scientific data. Once the record is on paper for his or her own and other people’s observation, the diarist has no more advantage in an endeavour to understand himself or herself than anyone else with access to this data would have in an endeavour to understand the diarist. This functional nature of diary writing and the model of the self underlying it can be seen in a detailed examination of diary writing, especially pious diary writing, in the seventeenth century.

The Diary as a Genre The clergyman Abraham de la Pryme, a prominent citizen of Hull, kept a diary in the 1690s. He was a learned and inquiring man, the author of the first history of Hull and a regular contributor to the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. His main interest as a diarist was in public affairs. Here is a typical entry, from 10 October 1696: OCTOB. 10 Things are very quiet yet, but the Jacobites are of undaunted spirits, and continue their high, impudent, treasonable talkings and discourses, almost as much as ever. New money beginns to grow plentyfull, there is no one almost but has some little quantity. All the mints are now in motion, and they give satisfaction to the country. (de la Pryme, 1869, p. 111)

On the same day, an acquaintance of de la Pryme in Leeds, Ralph Thoresby, wrote an entry in his own diary: 10 morn read Annots. yn at both mills, afte within writing, but spent ye late part of day abroad wth. ye Dr. & Salters about business, so part of Even, rest wth dear Mr. Ib. read Anns. (RLC MS NKS 2935, p. 176)

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The two men clearly had different ideas about what to include in a diary and how to put it. De la Pryme records confident opinions on matters of public interest and expresses them in bold generalizations. Thoresby records details of his own life which have no impact on anyone else, yet even so does not venture to express an opinion on them. Different personalities, of course, produce different diaries, but the difference here seems to go further. There are good reasons for regarding the two diaries as different in kind and as belonging to different genres. Thoresby’s diary belongs to a wider genre which I shall call the pious diary. The word ‘genre’ is used advisedly. Diarists were likely to have been influenced in the same way as other writers – by what they read. Webster has presented evidence that earlier in the seventeenth century pious diaries were confidential and often burned on the diarist’s death. Although he observes considerable similarity among diaries, he argues that this similarity is not the result of circulation (Webster, 1996, pp. 39, 49). Webster’s conclusions with respect to the confidentiality of diaries however, cannot be applied to Thoresby’s at the end of the century, nor to those of many of his contemporaries and associates. There is certainly evidence that diaries were sometimes regarded as confidential. In a letter to Thoresby requesting a transcript of a diary in Thoresby’s collection, a friend opines, ‘I know men put that into their Diarys they would not have viewed by any eyes’ (letter from H. Sampson, 14 September 1695; YAS MS 14). Yet even here it is possible that an expression of anxiety over the prospect of others reading one’s diary was in fact a kind of modesty formula. Pious diaries were often written in the expectation that the diarist’s children would read them, before or after the diarist’s death. The greater the consciousness of sin, the nearer the diarist was to being in a pentitent or ‘heartbroken’ state of grace. Worry that one’s diary would shock others by revealing one’s own sinfulness was potentially the sign of a penitent heart. This is certainly the impression left by Cotton Mather of New England pious diaries. In his ecclesiastical history of New England, he regrets the loss of pious diaries which could have been instructive and inspiring, and assumes that they are destroyed not because their contents are scandalous but because the diarist is modest (Mather, 1702). He writes of one divine: ‘He was known to keep a Diary; but he kept it with so much Reservation, that it is not known if any one else read any’ (p. 108). And of another: ‘He kept a Diary, the loss of which I can’t but mention with regret.’ He writes of Nathaniel Rogers that his ‘Invaluable Diary’ is lost

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but that ‘something of his Fathers is not so,’ and says he plans to make ‘Some Secret Papers’ ‘as Publick as I can’ (p. 109). In each case, Mather assumes that the lost diary would be of benefit to the pious, and that any preference on the part of the diarist for destruction or suppression can safely be ignored, because such a wish is an expression of pious modesty rather than of worldly anxiety about posthumous reputation. In Thoresby’s circle, many, if not all, diaries were written in the knowledge and expectation that they would be circulated after the diarist’s death, and perhaps before. In this respect, diaries seem in some cases to have been treated rather like the manuscript collections of poetry and other writings circulated among families and friends, as described by Ezell (Ezell, 1999). Thoresby knew of and read other people’s diaries throughout his life. There was Castilion Morris’s diary, for example, in the Leeds of his childhood. Morris was a member of the Leeds Corporation during the Civil War who kept ‘a Journall of Letters & Memorandums of matters of moment, Publick & private begun 14 Dece 1687’ (printed in the Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal 10 (1889), 159–64). Thoresby not only knew of this diary, but took notes from it in later life (YAS MS 17, section 3, p. 31). Morris’s journal was a form of historical chronicle, but the most commonly circulated kind of diary may have been the pious. Towards the end of his life, Thoresby records that he is ‘glad to understand that [one of his tenants] keeps a diary’ (13 November 1719; YAS MS 25, p. 8). There is evidence of such an attitude elsewhere in England. Ralph Josselin, a diarist and (reluctantly conformist) clergyman of Essex, describes reading and commenting on the diary of a (female) parishioner (Josselin, 1976, p. 396). Lady Margaret Hoby began her diary on the instruction of her spiritual adviser, and showed it to him regularly (Bourcier, 1976, p. 360). Even diarists who were not supervised may have known their diaries would be read after their death – by children, by parishioners, and even by a wider public. Thoresby seems to have valued diaries as offering patterns of exemplary life. He looked for evidence of piety and sought help for his own spiritual troubles. He felt honoured when John Sharp lent him the diary of Archbishop Toby Matthews, a Puritan of celebrated piety. Thoresby valued this diary so highly that he transcribed it (17 August 1695; YAS MS 22, p. 254). He also assumed that his own diary would be read after his death. He prefaced one volume (1683) with ‘This is the diary of a sinfull worm’ (RLC MS NKS 2935), a statement which could have been written only for the benefit of future

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readers. His autobiography, much of which is taken from his diaries, was written explicitly for his sons’ benefit, as evident in this conclusion to an anecdote about a coincidence: ‘a pretty odd accident tho it might perhaps be lookd upon as trifling if com-unicated to any others than my own children’ (YAS MS 26, p. 81). Thoresby expected his diary to be cherished by his children, for he refers them to it in his autobiography, as in this summary of the events of 1685: ‘See my Diary, Novem’ (YAS MS 26, p. 39). And despite his modest claim that what he writes would seem ‘trifling’ to outsiders, there is at least a hint that he imagined an audience beyond his own family. In a description of spiritual ecstasy in the autobiography, Thoresby includes a gloss on a Yorkshire word, thereby intimating, at the very least, a degree of self-consciousness: ‘my heart … begun to tremble & flacker (as we cal it) within my breast’ (YAS MS 26, p. 92). The parenthetical ‘as we cal it’ suggests that Thoresby has in mind readers from outside Yorkshire. Pious diaries were used by readers other than the diarist as examples of admirable spiritual discipline and as sources of ‘experiments,’ or material manifestations of God’s grace. There is some evidence that the diaries of visionaries were used for learning more about God or even about the future. Two diaries by women, one from the seventeenth and the other from the first half of the eighteenth century, consist almost entirely of ecstatic religious visions, and both were scrutinized by others in search of knowledge of God. One is the diary of a Quaker woman whose every entry is a record of a dream or vision, many including erotic encounters with Christ. There is evidence of slight censorship, whether by the diarist or someone else: one page has been torn out (f. 44), and a few words of erotic writing have been deleted, though not so as to be entirely illegible: off his sweetness how I lay in his armes, and hee filling my [illegible] lying [illegible] to [illegible], mouth to mouth [illegible] brest to brest, that I might be refreshed. (Bod MS Rawlinson D.1338, f. 43v)

Various signs indicate that this diary was composed for the benefit of a group of Quakers and not just for the diarist’s benefit or satisfaction. There is, for example, a statement of conviction that God’s spirit would breath through them ‘all’ (f. 8r). At the end of the diary, the diarist has written, ‘thise visions ware when did live with [illegible]’. And on a blank page next to one of the visions, featuring Christ asleep, is written: ‘this reprezentashan of Xt, being a slepe, & many auther expresans have a larg significashan tho: we understand but by degrees’ (f. 54v). The

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assumption seems to have been that other readers would find the records of the visions useful in their quest for spiritual understanding. The other visionary diary was used in a more prosaic and concrete way. In 1736, George Drummond of Edinburgh copied out large sections of the diary of ‘R.B.’, a middle-aged woman, into his own handsome folio diary; both his and R.B.’s entries are written in the same fair hand. He seems to have updated his volume from hers on a regular basis, as his own diary records regular examination of R.B.’s visions: 14th. Calm this morning in the duty with which I begun the day. R.B. has brought up her diary to the 12th June – writing it in her book – employed the morning – its satisfying to me, tho alas the most valuable part of it these 14 days past is lost, by her not writing it down, at the time. She had things from The Lord. (14 May 1737; EU MS Dc.1.82, vol. 1, p. 215)

Drummond’s reasons for studying R.B.’s diary combine the worldly and the pious. He is convinced that R.B. can find out from God what Drummond should do to further his business interests. In one entry, he expresses his frustration that R.B. failed to write down a vision at a time when he was looking for divine guidance as to whether or not to buy a lottery ticket. In another, he says he has given R.B. a letter with questions he wishes her to ask the Lord during her next vision (17 January 1738; vol. 2, p. 3). These examples illustrate the ubiquity of diary circulation, and the multiple uses of diaries for readers other than the diarist. Thoresby was keen to read any diaries which came his way, for both pious and scholarly reasons. His collection of diaries, whether original or transcribed, is described in his library and museum catalogue and printed in the Ducatus Leodensis: Extracts from the Day-Book, a curious M.S. of my honoured Friend Dr. Hen. Sampson, and from Mr. Heywood’s Diaries. Memoirs of Dr. Sam. Winter, not in the printed Narrative. The Life of Mr. John Shaw, Vicar of Rotheram, from the Original, writ by himself. Mr. Reyner of Lincoln, from his Diary, &c. The Life and Death of Archbp. Tobie Matthews, by Dr. Sampson; and of Mr. Elk. Wales of Pudsey, near Leedes, which I collected from Registers, M.S. and Original Papers in this Musaeum … 200. The Rev. Mr. Arthur Hildersham’s Diary, Nov. 21. 1612. to Oct. 18. 1613. The Original given me by his Grand-Son Mr. Franc. Tallents of Shrewsbury …

The Birth of the Recreational Diary 137 The Diary of Mr. Yardley Vicar of Astley, An. 1668 … The last Diary of the Pious Mr. Hen. Stubs. when he had been above 50 Years a Minister, yet abundant in Prayer and Preaching, 1678. Heads of some of his Sermons. Don. D. S. Stubs fil … 250. A Diary of Mr. Oliver Heywood, whereby it appears that in one Year he preached 105 Times, besides the Lord’s Days, kept 50 Days of Fasting and Prayer, nine of Thanksgiving, and travelled 1400 Miles in his Master’s Service. Don. D. Jon. Priestley. Extracts from other Diaries … A Diary, giving an Account of the rising and falling of the Barometer … A Transcript of Archbishop Toby Matthews’s Diary … (Thoresby, 1715a, pp. 537, 539, 541, 542, 543)

Nor was Thoresby the only diarist to guide future readers to his or her diary, as Thoresby guides his sons in his autobiography. One anonymous woman diarist, like Thoresby, labels her own diaries for the convenience of others: The fourth Boke of my dally obsarvations on my self Oct 18 1680 (Bod MS Rawlinson Q.e.27, f. 1r)

In the ‘fifth Booke’ she provides some directions for her readers: allso severall obvercations on my reading Bishop Usher Body of Devinity which you may find marked thus Bu the better to remember the many usefull things I find there by medetating on them a vers or 2 each morning. (f. 31)

What did Thoresby, and other godly readers, hope to learn from other people’s diaries? Part of the attraction was the display of exemplary lives. Thoresby was well acquainted with the practice of turning diaries into moralized biographies. In 1714, he records of a pious man, ‘yt his Memoirs wil be published fro his Diary’ (YML MS 21, p. 390). Thoresby himself contributed short biographies of this kind to Edward Calamy’s register of ministers ejected in 1660, and supplied Calamy with material from his collection of diaries (see, for example, 25 April 1702; YAS MS 23, p. 82). He also looked for signs of God’s

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ways with men; in the Ducatus, for example, he records instances of human sympathy across great distances: The like I find in the Diary of a most affectionate Friend of the late pious and learned Mr. Thomas Sharp, who died at Leedes 27 Aug. 1693. about seven in the Morning, at which very Moment his distant Friend fell into a bitter Agony of Tears upon the Apprehension that he was then dying. (Thoresby, 1715a, p. 614)

From Thoresby’s texts and those of others, then, it seems that pious diaries were routinely circulated among readers looking for examples of piety or seeking information about or a closer knowledge of God. That may explain why few surviving diaries seem to depict lurid vices. Certainly, Thoresby himself sometimes uses colourful and melodramatic language to describe his spiritual condition (as in his description of himself as a worm), but he never commits anything truly damaging to paper. At first glance, Pepys seems to have been the exception rather than the rule among the various kinds of diarists in recording material which on the face of it might damage his family’s honour – of course, we do not know how many such diaries were destroyed (Bourcier, 1976, p. 83). Yet even Pepys’s diary is perhaps not quite as it seems to twenty-firstcentury readers. Present-day commentators stress the literary qualities of the diary, the sense that it represents purely recreational writing (see, for example, Tomalin, 2002), yet the diary clearly had many functional aspects. It was used to keep a record of expenses, of reading, of health, of how closely Pepys stuck to his own resolutions, of what he said to whom and what he heard from whom, and, perhaps above all, to measure his progress in his great aim in life – financial and social advancement. Pepys records material which present-day readers might hesitate to expose to prying eyes, yet it is questionable how far he saw the diary as a secret text. It was written in a popular shorthand, and he had it bound and given pride of place in the library to which he devoted large sums of time and money, and which, in the absence of direct heirs, he bequeathed as a personal monument to Magdalen College, Cambridge. The book containing the key to the shorthand was kept in the same library. None of this suggests that Pepys regarded his diary as potentially embarrassing. If the text records material found less often in contemporary diaries, it may be that he had different ideas about shame, and different intentions in keeping a diary, than some of his contemporaries,

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and not that he was willing to risk disgrace by recording and preserving shameful confessions for the pleasure of it. Just as Pepys ensured his diary’s survival after his death by including it in his library, so families often kept pious diaries out of a sense of pride in the devout life of the diarist. The diary of Timothy Marriott, who died in 1708, was transcribed by his brother to look exactly like a printed book, and given a hand-written title-page (fig. 5.1). In the dedicatory epistle to his aunt, Samuel Marriott explains why she might find the diary worth reading: ‘The Papers that are here laid before you, have in them nothing of Politeness of Language and Stile to Recommend ’em: Yet being the Expressions of (I doubt not) an honest, humble, tender Mind, I perswade my self you will notwithstanding give ’em some room in your favourable Regards’ (p. vi). Circulation accounts for the close family resemblance of pious diaries. Thoresby knew the diaries of the Presbyterian ministers Oliver Heywood and Henry Newcome, and Heywood’s and Newcome’s diaries bear a strong resemblance to Thoresby’s. The diary of the Presbyterian minister James Clegg is also similar to these three, although Clegg seems not to have been known to Thoresby. This entry from Thoresby’s diary is typical: 8 Dec: 1701, morn: read Clark before family praye, writ rest of Sermon in diary in secret, yn at praye, aftenoon had Mr. Dixon & Mr Pawsons kind assistance in accounting with Mr. Ib. til Even, within writing to ye Dean of York & Mr. Hodgston & … read Antoninus & Clark before praye. (YAS MS 23, p. 27)

As in all but a handful of entries over thirty-seven years, Thoresby here splits the day into three parts: morning, afternoon, and evening. He never writes a continuous narrative of the day. Bible study (reading Clark’s annotations on the Bible) and prayer are carefully noted, as always. There is little in the way of personal opinion, beyond the description of Mr Pawson’s assistance as ‘kind’. He notes how he has used his own time, without expanding on anyone else’s activities or on public life. A similar structure can be seen in pious diaries from Scotland (including George Drummond’s, quoted from above, and EU MS Laing Coll. 262), and variations in those from London and elsewhere. This anonymous London diary from 1707, for example, divides the day’s events not only into ‘morning’ and ‘afternoon,’ but according to hour:

THE

DIARY

OF

Mr. Timothy Marriott.

Transcribed, (for the better preserving of his Memory), from the Originals – written with his own Hand:

By

His Loving Brother SAMUEL MARRIOTT

Anno Dom. 1714.

Figure 5.1. Title-page of the diary of Timothy Marriott (Bod MS Add.A.49, p. iii).

The Birth of the Recreational Diary 141 August y e 6: … Doll and good for nothing 8 myend my bssness well (9) att Mrs Dueys a ligh and foolesh myend Inclind to Lust (2) as yousall &) att Mrs Dueys a gane ye Same (9) att my Mothers 11) att home very indfeant o most blessed Lord Inspire mee with Grase to amend my Indfrence and to Refine will to thine for Christ Sack Amen (Bod MS Rawlinson C.861, f. 20v)

A similar structure is used by the diarist Woodman in 1706 (Bod MS Rawlinson D.1334). But there are reasons apart from circulation why pious diaries of the period resemble one another. Diary writing was a prescribed spiritual task, with specific aims and requirements (see Webster, 1996; Webster, 1997, p. 125; and McGiffert, 1994, for a psycho-theological account of pious diaries earlier in the seventeenth century). Such tasks were formally described as ‘duties’: in addition to diary writing, they consisted of prayer, both in solitude and with the household, and Bible study. Duties had to be performed daily, and tied the godly to a rigid and demanding timetable. Jeremy Taylor insisted that the performance of a duty be the first and last activity of the day: ‘Every time that is not seized upon by some other duty is seasonable enough for prayer; but let it be performed as a solemn duty morning and evening’ (Taylor, Jeremy, 1989, vol. 1, p. 216). Thoresby’s correspondent and fellow diarist Oliver Heywood, a Presbyterian minister working in Manchester and a prolific author, expected his readers’ day to be punctuated by duties, and offered advice for those who sin in between times: ‘Retire into a corner’ and ‘bewail it’ (Heywood, 1693b, p. 122). Skipping duties was a sign of a hard, or ‘adamantine,’ heart, one which denied God’s grace. Thoresby worries that business or pleasure might ‘entrench upon the more practical dutys of Religion’ (YAS MS 26, p. 40). He sees his diary not as a recreation or a relief but as an ‘irksome task’: ‘Here I begun, what I had childishly dreaded as too great a restraint, viss a Diary by my dear fathers express order … This I knew had been his own constant practise, but was under a great temptation not to head in his steps in this particular, looking upon it as a very irksome task’ (YAS MS 26, p. 8). He took on this onerous obligation as something necessary for his spiritual health. Timothy Marriott writes, ‘I have a great while omitted Recording in my Boak; for which O Lord I beseech thee have Mercy’ (Bod MS Add.A.49, p. 58). A woman diarist of the 1670s and 1680s writes, the ‘perteculer grace I will endever to atain during the righting this Booke is sprituall

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recolection or the constant consideration of the prsence of God the Lord give me his grace that at the end I may perceive some incres in this virtue’ (9 January 1681; Bod MS Rawlinson Q.e.27, f. 31r). The timetable for duties seems to have required rigorous observation. A few days of neglect could diminish the devotee’s zeal, and he or she would have to strive harder to make up the loss. When the Scottish diarist Sir George Maxwell of Pollock missed a few days of diary writing in 1656, he reported that setting aside ‘the work of self examination’ had interfered with his Bible study by inhibiting his response to ‘the Word’ (20 April 1656; NLS MS 3150, f. 125). Thoresby also used the duty of diary writing as an aid to his other duties. Like his father, he used his diary to observe ‘the frame of my Soul in duty,’ by watching out for ‘the wandrings of my heart in praye & interruptions by vain tho’ts, wch. alas are innumerable in all religious performances’ (YAS MS 26, p. 8). Prayers full of such wanderings and interruptions were ‘cast back as dung in his face’ by a righteous God (23 June 1683; RLC MS NKS 2935, p. 6). For Thoresby and some others among the godly, duties were both a source of and a solace for worry. Devotees anxious about their performance of duties could turn to instruction manuals. These books gave advice about form and frequency of performance, the relative importance of different duties, and so on. From some of these texts it appears that diary writing and praying in solitude (as opposed to taking part in family prayer or praying in church) emerged as new duties during the seventeenth century. Both were considered sufficiently novel to require advocacy. At least two books argued that diary writing was a religious duty. One was Isaac Ambrose’s Media; or, The Middle Things (1657), the second of three books offering instruction in the first, middle, and last things in a Christian’s life, with ‘first things’ meaning things of the first importance. Media is concerned with ‘The Means, Duties, ordinances, both Secret, Private and Publicke, for continuance and increase of a Godly life’ (Ambrose, 1657, A1r). Ambrose was a Lancashire minister whose books sold particularly well among northern Presbyterians (Macfarlane, 1970, p. 7), so it is possible Thoresby knew his work. Thoresby certainly knew another book on diaries, quotations from which he included on the cover of his diary for 1701–4 (YAS MS 23, inside cover): this was John Beadle’s The Journal or Diary of a Thankful Christian (1656). Beadle was sufficiently anxious about the novelty of diary writing to appeal to tradition and precedent. He cited merchants’ accounts, physicians’ records of experiments, lawyers’ journals of cases, and biblical chronicles: ‘[Moses and the Israelites] had a Journall of all Gods

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mercies, and why not we a Diary of all God’s gracious dealings with us’ (Beadle, 1656, p. 13). Ambrose was just as anxious to establish a tradition for diary writing: ‘To this purpose we read of many Ancients that were accustomed to keep Diaries or Day-books of their actions, and out of them to take an account of their lives’ (Ambrose, 1657, p. 87). Neither writer gives instruction concerning the style or format of diaries, but both make suggestions as to content: diarists should record ‘experiences’ (Beadle, 1656, p. 55; Ambrose, 1657, p. 164). ‘Experiences’ were physical manifestations to individuals of God’s grace; they usually took the form of brushes with death or injury in which the writer only just escaped. Experiences of God’s grace differed from intellectual or rapturous awareness that God was gracious, because their impact was on the senses rather than on the spirit or the intellect – hence their other name, ‘experiments.’ They were also known as ‘evidences’ of God’s grace. Ambrose’s definitions in Media are typical: ‘Of the Nature of Experiences. Experience (say some) is a knowledge and discovery by sense not evident in it self, but manifested by some event or effect. This description contains both natural and spiritual experience’ (Ambrose, 1657, p. 164). Some experiences of grace were unmistakable. Ralph’s father John Thoresby’s fragment of autobiography describes his falling into freezing water while skating as a young boy, and escaping unharmed (RLC MS NKS 2935, f. 3). Earlier in the century, the New England diarist Thomas Shepherd included several narrow escapes in his spiritual autobiography (McGiffert, 1994, pp. 5–6). Other experiences are less obvious, at least to a modern reader. Some are of things which did not happen. For example, Ralph Thoresby’s diary regularly records thanks for having experienced the grace of a safe return from a journey, the suggestion being that God’s hand has been active in holding back numberless calamities: ‘I went with Mr. Tho: Dics to Mecham to visit Mrs. Dickonson & coz: Judith, and got very well (tho late) home, thro ye good Providence of a gracious God who is abundant in mercy and compassion’ (10 October 1677; YAS MS 21, p. 3). Beadle and Ambrose were not the first to advocate recording experiences, although they were the most vociferous. Sir Thomas Browne was also keen for his readers to ‘register not only strange, but merciful occurences. Let Ephemerides not Olympiads give thee account of his mercies. Let thy Diaries stand thick with dutiful Mementos and Asterisks of acknowledgment’ (Browne, 1928, vol. 1, p. 250). Many diarists took this advice to heart, including the Scots Presbyterian Sir George Maxwell and the Puritan vicar of Colne, Ralph Josselin.

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Pious diarists like Thoresby used these records of experiences for a number of reasons. Some ministers encouraged their parishioners to write down their experiences in order to cheer themselves when despondent or unresponsive in prayer, as well as to confound cynics who regarded Nonconformist piety as excessive and self-important. Oliver Heywood, one of Thoresby’s correspondents, was a Presbyterian minister in Manchester whose diary Thoresby knew and whose books he read. Heywood kept, separately from his diary, a notebook which was dedicated exclusively to the recording of experiences and in which each experience was dated. In A Family Altar, he advised the reader that experiences should be ‘observed’ (Heywood, 1693b, p. 125). Some such notebooks were printed (Smith, 1989, p. 34), and we know that Thoresby read at least one of them: in one of his manuscript collections of quotations and notes, there are long excerpts copied from ‘Turner’s His: of Remarkable Providences 1697’ (YAS MS 17, p. 41). Experiences could also be relished by the diarist’s family after his or her death. John Winthrop’s diary was given the title Experiencia (Winthrop, 1925), and Oliver Heywood’s biography of his father-in-law includes a section entitled ‘Experiences collected out of Mr Angier’s diary’ (Heywood, 1937, p. 100). The resemblance among pious diaries such as Thoresby’s is partly owing to the diarists’ having followed the instruction by Beadle, Ambrose, and other authorities to include experiences, but in some respects it must be attributed to other causes, such as private instruction by ministers, or circulation. Nothing in Beadle or Ambrose instructed a diarist to split the day into sections, for example, or to eschew personal comment. Indeed, both Ambrose and Beadle tend to confound diaries with (auto-)biographies. Beadle tells his diarist to include his ‘age in Christ’ (Beadle, 1656, pp. 48 ff; see Webster, 1996, for a review of discussions of Beadle’s book) – the expression referred to the date on which a Christian experienced conversion and became convinced of his salvation. Since that event often took place during adolescence, Beadle’s instruction seems more appropriate to an autobiography than to a day-by-day account, the elements of which must necessarily be uncertain. It is possible, too, that ‘age in Christ’ referred to the date on which a devotee made a personal, often written, covenant with God. The Reverend Gordon’s diary of 1698 begins with ‘Some observations anent the Covenant of Grace, and Works’: ‘I do heartily acquiesce to the way of salvation thr’o the new covenant standing recorded in many places of Scripture … I desire to give my heart to thee to be stamp’d with thy whole will … and so I subscribe the same in thy presence William Gordon’ (EU MS Laing Coll. 271, p. 9). James Nasmyth

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recorded both his father’s covenant and his own in his diary: ‘Att Edinburgh the first day of July this yeare, I doo this night most solemnly Restore and Renew all my former covenants and Ingadgements to be thine O mercifull and longsuffering Lord’ (EU MS Dc.7.81, f. 11r). The confusion between diary and biography extended beyond diarywriting circles and included a confusion between auto- and other kinds of biography, as is illustrated by the history of the word ‘memoir’. A memoir was simply a dated note, like the entry in a diary; memoirs could be collected in a book either by the author or by his survivors. The OED’s first recorded use of the word is Evelyn’s 1673 description of his diary as ‘memoirs.’ A person’s life, whether recorded by that person in a diary, written by the person in an autobiography, or compiled by someone else as a biography, consisted of a series of observations. There was no sense of autobiography as revealing special insights unavailable to biography, so long as the memoirs were recorded. The self recorded by means of memoranda was open to public inspection, and the texts emerging from the memoranda were public texts, just as all texts in an era of reading aloud were potentially public texts.

Diaries as Prayer There is little evidence that Ambrose or Beadle had a particular influence on the language and structure of Thoresby’s diary entries, but connections between private prayer manuals and pious diaries like Thoresby’s can be drawn. Private prayer, like diary writing, seems to have emerged as a duty in the seventeenth century. Oliver Heywood, the Manchester minister, wrote a manual advocating private prayer entitled Closet Prayer (1671), which Thoresby read during the 1680s (RLC MS NKS 2935, p. 59). Heywood was zealous in his insistence that private prayer was a long-established practice; like Ambrose and Beadle, he cited biblical characters as offering ancient precedents, for example by describing Jacob’s night in the desert as one of closet prayer (Heywood, 1671, p. 15). At the same time, he felt that solitary prayer was sufficiently novel to require defence against accusations of modishness: ‘Some have scornfully called private devotions, by the derogating title of ChimneyPrayers, and think to confine all religion to publick places’ (Heywood, 1671, p. 42). Like diary writing, private prayer was solitary but not confidential. Heywood does not recommend it for confession to God of what is too shameful to confess before man; the devotee needed to be alone because solitude helped create a suitable emotional state, the right

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mood for prayer. Heywood found, for example, that the melancholy which Burton attributes to solitude (Burton, 1932, p. 246) was appropriate for mourning one’s sins (Heywood, 1693b, pp. 2, 140): ‘the poor Soul can more freely open his heart to God in a closet’ (Heywood, 1671, p. 24). There is also evidence that private prayer was considered more suitable than family prayer for the making of individual requests. The Scottish Presbyterian Mrs Veitch set aside specific days on which to pray for specific causes, and kept dated records of successful prayers in order to refute the atheistical belief that God did not answer prayers (NLS MS 34.6.22, p. 50). Sir George Maxwell devoted a section of his diary to a list of things ‘to be prayed for,’ including success in business and remedies for the ‘Ignorance of some of the family’ (4 July 1655; NLS MS 3150) – this last clearly seems more suitable for private than for family prayer. If private prayer was not more intimate than family prayer, neither does it seem to have been more casual. Physical posture was important, as God was watching even in empty rooms. Prayer manuals give careful instructions on how to hold oneself when praying alone. Even early in the century, before the more detailed manuals appear, divines give advice on how to perform brief outbursts of prayer. In Holy Living, Jeremy Taylor writes that a sudden burst of gratitude does not require kneeling, but should be accompanied by clasped hands and upturned eyes (Taylor, Jeremy, 1989, vol. 1, p. 216). John Angier, Oliver Heywood’s father-in-law, recommends ‘kneeling down, or putting the hat and hand before the face to pray’ (Heywood, 1937, p. 139). The historiographer James Howell describes ejaculations as ‘occasional’ and ‘sudden’ yet as never catching him entirely unawares: ‘besides prayers at meals, and some other occasional ejaculations, as upon the putting on of a clean shirt, washing my hands, and at lighting of candles; which because they are sudden, I do in the third person’ (Howell, 1892, vol. 1, pp. 333–7). And just as physical posture was studied even in solitude, so was language. The language of private prayer seems to have been subject to many of the rules of family prayer. Presbyterians thought it wrong to write prayers in advance, even for oneself, to say nothing of using those written in a prayer book by some faraway cleric; they called such prayers ‘set forms.’ In Heywood’s A Family Altar, the ban on set forms is uncompromising: ‘By Form is meant a Mask, Vizor or Appearance opposed to Substance and Reality’ (Heywood, 1693b, p. 45). Prescribed words were bad because they masked the devotee’s true feelings. Indeed, they actually harmed the devotee, by numbing his

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heart and allowing him to distance himself emotionally from his words. Heywood’s father-in-law, John Angier, quotes a letter from a woman whose ‘dissatisfaction concerning the Common Prayer’ arose from ‘the ineffectualness of forms upon my heart,’ and who wonders if she is thereby excused from attending church altogether (the ‘penalties’ she refers to were a Laudian measure): All this put together, and duly considered, these Queries I make. 1. Whether I ought to hear it, as some press, that it is a sin to forbear? or whether it be not sinful in me to hear it? Or whether I may sometimes, as seldom as I can (to avoid the penalties) hear? Or 2. Whether upon these accounts of my forbearance, I may comfortably suffer what may be inflicted, and expect support? or 3. If you grant the hearing, whether it may be heard as something by the by, without giving much attention, or with imploying my heart with other thoughts and Ejaculations more edifying? (Heywood, 1937, p. 108)

It seems that the woman is not just worried that the words of a dead heart will not constitute a prayer, but fearful that even trying to pray with a dead heart constitutes a sin. After joining the Church of England, Thoresby felt sufficiently touchy on this subject to include a defence of the Prayer Book in his autobiography; he says that he had found, ‘experimentally,’ that deadness of heart was not related to forms (YAS MS 26, p. 185). The head of a household was required to lead the family in prayer every day, at length and without notes. Many men (they usually were men) found compulsory improvisation a heavy responsibility, although proficient performers were highly esteemed. Heywood describes how his father-in-law, John Angier, would begin quietly but build up to a fervent, even tearful climax without using inapt or ‘wasteful’ words (Heywood, 1937, pp. 72–3, 76). So entrenched was a view of family prayer as performance that Heywood warned against the vanity of offering poor performance as an excuse for avoiding it (Heywood, 1693b, pp. 53–4). Thoresby shared his worry, though he expressed it less harshly: ‘A Religious & good man whose constant & indispencible duty it is to pray to God, need not fear, nor be ashamed to perform it before men occasionally’ (YAS MS 26, p. 94). Prayer manuals offered some advice on the art of improvisation: using a technique like that of oral poets, devotees were instructed to recall phrases memorized from the Bible and sermons and string them together spontaneously at the moment of prayer. Heywood

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advised those who ‘know not what to say’ to take ideas and phrases from sermons and from the Bible, since ‘God loves to be spoken to in his own language’ (Heywood, 1693b, pp. 101–2). In chapter 1, I described the memories of the pious as well stocked with appropriate expressions, to the point where it is difficult to draw a line between their own words and those remembered from sermons and books. Many spiritual autobiographies, for example, recount climactic moments in which God communicates with the writer directly by putting an expression from the Bible into his or her mind: one morning when I was again at prayer and trembling under the fear of this, that no word of God could help me, that piece of a sentence darted in upon me, My grace is sufficient. (Bunyan, 1987, p. 53) that word came to my mind Job: 13.15 I will trust in him though he should kill me. (‘Mr james ffrasers life writen by himself ’; NLS MS Wodrow 34.5.19, p. 37) [God] answered my objections by his preaching to my Soul that day from that Scripture Isai: 48.17. (life of Mrs Katherine Ross; p. 112) That word in Daniel was brought into my mind. (life of Mrs Veitch; p. 54)

I also described the role of memorization in domestic Bible study in the seventeenth century. So steeped in the Bible were the participants, thanks to sermons and to private and family study, that their minds retrieved phrases automatically at times of stress. Since advice on posture suggests that solitary prayer was not intended to be casual and informal, it is possible that the same methods of composition were used in this kind of prayer as in family prayer. The necessarily solitary prayers composed as diary entries by Thoresby use a formulaic method. And prayer constitutes the most important part of many diaries. Some, from that of the noblewoman Anne Clifford to that of the clergyman Ralph Josselin, contain prayers in almost every entry, as does Thoresby’s (Clifford, 1990; Josselin, 1976). Mary Woodforde concluded most of her entries with a prayer, whether or not the subject of the entry was religious (Woodforde, 1932). In Media, Isaac Ambrose explains how his own diary, begun in 1641, proved to be an invaluable vehicle for prayer: ‘1. Hereby [the diarist] observes something of God to his soul,

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and of his soul to God 2. Upon occasion he pours out his soul to God in prayer accordingly, and either is humbled or thankful’ (Ambrose, 1657, p. 87). The prayers in Ralph Josselin’s diary are very similar to those recommended by Jeremy Taylor. The most obvious resemblance between the manual and the diary is in the ejaculations, which might have been thought alien to the written word. Some of the ejaculations recommended by Taylor do not specify God as the addressee, the implication being that since dialogue with God is constant during all activities, no formal address is necessary before a brief outburst: ‘Keep me from sin and death eternal: and from my enemies visible and invisible’; ‘Keep me, O lord, from the destroying Angel, and from the wrath of God’ (Taylor, Jeremy, 1989, vol. 1, pp. 51–3, 126). The same brevity and the same use of imperatives are found throughout the diaries of Josselin and Thoresby: ‘Lord, heare and bee gracious, god good to mee in the word. the lord watch over me for good’ (Josselin, 1976, p. 526). Indeed, prayers of this kind were so formulaic and predictable in spite of their sometimes passionate content that a number of diarists reduced them to abbreviations. Thoresby used the same brief prayer whenever he recorded a death in his diary – ‘Lord sanctify all mementoes of mortality’ – but usually this is abbreviated to ‘Lord sanctify &c …’. Another common abbreviated tag is ‘Lord pity &c’, which is short for ‘Lord pity and pardon all offences’. It is important to understand that ‘formulaic’ here does not mean ‘scripted.’ Prayers in Thoresby’s diary, however fossilized and whatever the influence of sermons and the Bible, were fashioned in the first instance by Thoresby himself, even though frequent repetition led to their abbreviation. Prayer manuals, at least those read by Presbyterians and other descendants of Puritanism, gave advice about spontaneous composition only (Henry Hammond’s Private Forms of Prayer, 1660, less severe than others, includes full prayers for the reader’s use, but then Hammond was stoutly conformist). In some pious diaries, including Thoresby’s, prayer and report are sometimes indistinguishable. It is often impossible to tell whether the diarists are recording information for a human audience, merely exclaiming to themselves, or praying. There is no reason to believe that the diarists themselves always knew. The line from Josselin’s diary quoted above is highly ambiguous: Lord, heare and bee gracious, god good to mee in the word. the lord watch over me for good. (Josselin, 1976, p. 526)

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The expression ‘god good to mee in the word’ is a formulaic report on the success of Josselin’s daily Bible reading, and the omission of ‘was’ after ‘god’ is routine. But sandwiched as it is between a direct address to God and an expression about God, the phrase takes on the colour of prayer. Such statements seem even more ambiguous when examined in the light of the prayer manuals. Some of Taylor’s model prayers consist merely of strings of statements. If no initial apostrophe is used, it becomes impossible to categorize the statements as addresses to God in the second person or exclamations about God in the third person. When a string such as this – O Lord God Almighty, thou art our Father, we are thy children, thou art our Redeemer, we thy people purchased with the price of thy most precious blood, be pleased to moderate thy anger towards thy servants, let not thy whole displeasure arise, lest we be consumed and brought to nothing. (Taylor, Jeremy, 1989, vol. 1, p. 291)

– is transferred to a diary, second and third person can hardly be disentangled: The lord good to mee in leading mee up unto Christ as my soules releif under the experience of the working of corruption, god good to mee in the word, accept mee in Christ, my heart went along with the notes of faith, as true in my soul blessed bee god. (Josselin, 1976, p. 527)

Without Taylor’s initial ‘O Lord God Almighty’, the string can be read as either a prayer or a record. In the end, it is impossible to maintain a distinction between addressing God directly and recording religious observations. Thoresby’s diary belongs to the pious diary genre, which it shared with those of both acquaintances of Thoresby such as Heywood and strangers to him such as the northern Presbyterian minister James Clegg, the Londoner Timothy Marriott, and the several Scottish Presbyterian ministers I have referred to. Its generic character can be attributed to three things. First, diaries of this kind were circulated, and the diarists were aware of this. Second, the contents of this and other pious diaries were influenced by spiritual manuals and possibly by private instruction; Thoresby, for example, is one of a number of diarists who regularly record ‘experiences’ of God’s grace. Third, Thoresby’s diary

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writing was closely related to the duty of private prayer; it therefore consists substantially of prayer formulae composed using the method recommended for prayer. In Thoresby’s hand, moreover, the genre is a rigid one, resisting adaptation to other functions. In his recording of traumatic or emotional events, for example, Thoresby does not deviate from a formula; he either fits his emotions into a regular prayer, or else abstains from writing until his emotions are under control. Both strategies are evident in the entries at the time of his father’s death in 1679, when Thoresby was twenty-two. For two days he was too deeply moved to write. When he returns to his diary, he does not record the death at all, but continues his routine recording of sermon notes and prayer. Instead of writing an entry on the subject of his feelings, he works expressions of feeling into conventional reports of success or failure in duties: 5 novembe 1679 Mr. Sharp from 124 Psalm 6 vers shewd very well yt we have infinite reason to bless God for his wonderfull & miraculous deliverances to this poor sinfull nation [quotes sermon] But alas alas these great national mercys for wch. I desire to bless God, are all imbittered by my personal Affliction, yt amazing stroke, yt heavy dispensation wch. even presses me down to ye very pitt, I find ye sence of my loss daily greater & greater insomuch yt without ye help of an omnipotent God, it is impossible to be supported unde it, O lord God do thou gratiously assist mee, help me to carry my self unde this severe affliction as becomes a Christian, humble mee thorowly for my heinous Provocations yt have procurred such a lamentable affliction yt have laid my greatest superlatively greatest comfort in the dust. O Lord God do thou graciously make up (for thou alone art able, and thou oh Lord art sufficient, thou hast promised + I trust wilt perform) this inexpressible loss in ye happy fruition of the fountain whence all those desireable happinesses did proceed oh Lord God I am in some degree sensible of this amazing stroke (the dread where of overcomes even sorrow itself) but do thou more & more humble mee for those particular sins yt have been so displeasing to thee & enable me to overcome them all, alas Lord I find by miserable experience yt I can do nothing that is good of my self (for only to do evil is present with mee) but thou canst do all things, thou madest my j & thou canst mend it, oh yt thou wouldst do it for thy mercys sake, give mee a more heavenly disposition of soul & wisdome to imitate in some measure ye Graces yt my entirely beloved & now blessed & glorious tryumphing Parents derived from thee. (YAS MS 21, p. 77)

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He begins the entry as he always does when he has been to church, by naming the preacher, using the formula ‘shewed very well …’, and providing the text. Often, having completed his sermon notes, he adds a prayer that God will help him benefit from the sermon, or else laments his inability to do so and his hard heart. Here the practice serves as a cover for a naked expression of grief which has no other place in the diary. He introduces his expressions of feeling with ‘I find’, as though he is reporting on his spiritual progress as usual rather than breaking down (see Webster, 1996, p. 49, for the frequency of such expressions in early-seventeenth-century diaries). Before long the outburst turns into prayer, another routine component of diary entries. This in turn is slowly transformed, from a prayer asking for help in time of suffering into one proclaiming the greatness of God’s grace in comparison with his own weakness – this subject, the diarist’s lowliness, was de rigueur in pious diaries. For all the emotion in this entry, the regular entry format is not disturbed by the momentous event of bereavement; even great and unexpected sorrow is contained by sermon notes, conventional prayers, and reports on spiritual progress. Pious diaries were public in being available for inspection by other readers, both during and after the diarist’s lifetime, and in being modelled on other publicly available texts. They were public also in being structured around a factual record – a structure which placed the diarist and any other observer in the same position in assessing the record made. Finally, they were public in the degree to which they consisted of declamatory prayer, a speech form which made no distinction between public and private performance, and the audience of which frequently included neighbours and family members. In its character as public in all these ways, the pious diary belongs to writing in which the reader is a speaker and the text is to be broadcast rather than privately and silently communicated between the diarist and an imagined reader.

Diaries as Observation The collective impression given by seventeenth- and early-eighteenthcentury pious diaries is not of ‘self-exploration,’ with its present-day reference to the discovery of complex psychological truths through introspection, but of ‘self-observation.’ The words ‘observe’ and ‘observation’ occur again and again in diaries of all kinds during the period. A Diary of Occurrences and Observations begun June ye 15th. O.J. 1711. (Bod MS Rawlinson D.428, f. 12)

The Birth of the Recreational Diary 153 What then remain’d but to make the best improvement my Capacity would permit which suitable to ye weaknesse thereof) I perform’d in as compendious a Manner as I could by making a Diary, As Likewise particular Observations of all such Occurrences which I thought most Remarkable in your Hon:rs Progresse. (travel diary, 1662; Bod MS Rawlinson D.84, f. 2r) Observacons- in my Fen Journey begun 19 May 1657. (Bod MS Ashmole 784, f. 31r) The fourth Boke of my dally obsarvations on my self. (Bod MS Rawlinson Q.e.27, f. 1r) Some few slight observations made in a short voyage into Flanders & Holland in Summer 1686. wch I put downe here out of my Note-booke for my owne private satisfaction as a memoriall that I have been in these countryes. (Bod MS Smith 141, f. 125v) Now that I have set downe what I have observed in particular, I must say some thing in generall of this famous towne, which is esteemed one of the greatest and finest of the world. (travel diary, 1649; Bod MS Rawlinson D.76, f. 16r) Some observations anent the Covenant of Grace, and Works. (EU MS Laing Coll. 271, p. 1) Collections & Observations on severall subjects. (EU MS Laing Coll. 262, p. 27)

The word ‘observation’ turns up frequently in another context in the period, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Volume 20, number 241 alone includes a letter with ‘some additional Observations on the Giants Causway in Ireland’ (pp. 209–23) and notice of a book discussing a meridian line in a church ‘drawn and fitted for Astronomical Observations’ (pp. 240–3) (Philosophical Transactions, June 1698). The observations made by pious diarists about their state of mind in prayer, their response to sermons, and the use they made of their time are empirical data. Once recorded, these data can be examined both by the diarist and by other readers for a variety of purposes, including those of gathering evidence of God’s providence, deciding whether or not the diarist is saved, and even prophesying the future from dreams and visions.

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Diaries therefore were everyday public or semi-public utterances, like letters and greetings extended to acquaintances in the street. The pious diary was not the only genre of diary in the era. Astronomical diaries, such as Simon Foreman’s written at the beginning of the seventeenth century and Elias Ashmole’s written after the Restoration, also resemble one another. They record instances of good and bad fortune, and assign a precise time for everything of importance: I first kissed the Kings hand 4H: P.M. being introduced by Mr Tho: Chiffinch.

16.

10H A.M. was the 2d tyme I had the honour to discourse with the King: and then he gave me the place of Windsor Herald: The Warrant beares date 22. June

18 22.

(Bod MS Ashmole 1136, f. 28v)

Both Ashmole and Foreman used material from their diaries to write their own horoscopes. It is possible that some other diarists, whose choice of subject matter is governed by obscure motives, may have been keeping relevant details to take to a local astrologer. The diary of Joseph Bufton, an Essex weaver, for example, was kept in the blank leaves of almanacs and covers the years 1688 to 1716. It includes details of financial accounts and of births, marriages, and deaths in the parish, as well as recording ‘remarkable events’ such as hangings, thefts, and oddly shaped hailstones and, among other historical events, the king’s visits to the area (Bro L MSS 8 and 10). Given Ashmole’s deep astrological interest in all encounters with the king, and the persistence of belief in such magical powers as touching as a cure for the king’s evil, Bufton’s careful attention to the movements of the monarch may indicate more than simple curiosity. Ashmole provides a particularly useful example of the functional approach to diary writing, since he kept different diaries for different purposes. His travel diary contains notes of the kind of monument inscriptions which other antiquaries, including Thoresby, might have found useful (Bod MS Ashmole 784; other antiquarian travel diaries of this kind include Thoresby’s diary of a trip to Scotland in September 1681; see Hume Brown, 1892). The title of Ashmole’s diary of public events gives a clue about his method of composition in the diaries: ‘Historicall Notes taken out of ^of some of my Loose Papers’ (Bod MS Ashmole 826, f. 140 r). The suggestion is that Ashmole kept dated notes of all

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kinds of events and later wrote them up in the relevant diary. At least one event appears in a different form in two of his diaries: Nov: 2. Nov: 7.

I was this night called to the Barr in the Midle Temple Hall. I had my Admittance to the Bar, in ye sd Hall. (Bod MS Ashmole 1136, f. 35v)

7. Nov: 1660 30.P:M: I tooke the Oath of Supremacy (upon my admittance to the Barr,) in the midle Temple hall. About 4H:P:M: the Queene Mother & the Princess Henrietta Maria, came into my closet at Whitehall. (Bod MS Ashmole 826, f. 77r)

An obvious account of the relationship between these texts – that the second is an expansion of the first – is unlikely, since it is usually the first diary (MS Ashmole 1136) which is fuller and more detailed. Instead, the importance given to the event seems related to the function of the diary concerned. Anthony Wood, the Oxford historian, seems to have used a similar method of diary composition. His diaries consist of short notes, frequently of scholars’ deaths though also of events in his own life, scribbled in the blank pages of almanacs. Many of his notes have been scored out but remain legible, the suggestion being that they have been transferred elsewhere, in particular to Wood’s great work, the Atheniae Oxoniensis (Bod MS Wood’s Diaries 1–39). Another genre of diary was the continental travel diary. It was generally kept by a young man or his tutor making the grand tour, and sometimes for business. This kind of diary was more likely than the others discussed here to be copied in a fair hand, sometimes into large folio volumes. The diary of Robert Moody, tutor and companion to the son of Lord Maynard on his tour of 1661–2, was prepared in the manner of a printed book, with ornaments and dedication: ‘What then remain’d but to make the best improvement my Capacity would permit (which suitable to ye weaknesse thereof) I perform’d in as compendious a Manner as I could by making a Diary, As Likewise particular Observations of all such Occurrences which I thought most Remarkable in your Hon:rs Progresse’ (Bod MS Rawlinson D.84, f.2r). Examples of similar travel diaries in fair copies include Robert Bargrave’s of 1643 and 1653 (Bod MS Rawlinson C. 799) and anonymous diaries of 1648 (Bod MS Rawlinson D.120) and 1649 (Bod MS Rawlinson D.76). As pious diaries do, these

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share a family resemblance, probably owing to their circulation (the handsome fair copies were particularly likely to be directed at other readers) and to the advice given by parents and others: If you would advantage your self by Travel, you ought to Note, and then Comment upon your Observations, remembring as well the bad, that you may avoid it, as the good, to put it in execution and practice, and without committing these things to Pen, they will pass from your Memory, without leaving any profitable results behind them. Let no hast therefore hurry you through any considerable remarkable place, but stay and view what is worthy in it, and be sure to Register it in your Journal, which will very much fasten it in your memory; the Charactering of your thoughts in Paper, will fit them ready for your use; and he that does thus, may rejourney all his Travels at home. (Fairfax, 1691, pp. 38–9)

A number of diaries were inspired by a simple desire for certainty as to the dates of major events. In an era before ‘newspapers of record,’ it is perhaps not surprising that such diarists as Thoresby’s three friends Evelyn, de la Pryme, and William Nicolson should all note down those of their own actions which touched on public affairs, as well as news they received by newsletter or orally (see de la Pryme, ed. Jackson, 1869; Nicolson, ed. Jones and Holmes, 1985). At least one diarist, Thomas Smith in the 1680s, kept an (irregular) diary of the political and legal disputes he was involved in, to prevent any misrepresentation of his words at a later date: ‘I being the next Senior then present, the Bishop of Chester asked mee the same question: I read my answer, wch I had put downe in my Almanack ^wch I held in my hand just before, easily foreseeing, what the Commissioners aimed at by their ^foregoing proceedure, that it might not bee mistaken or misreported: and it was word for word this’ (Bod MS Smith 141, f. 21r). None of the diarists I have mentioned kept a diary aimlessly, or solely for recreation. None can be described as conversing with his diary. Their diaries were kept, in general, for a purpose, and with the expectation that they would be read by other people. But the new model of the reader as a hearer ushers in a new kind of diary. Whereas the older diary was functional, the newer diary is recreational. The older diary was public, but the newer diary draws on a prose style developed for a reader as a hearer in order to create a narrative of the diarist’s life which is confided to an assumed reader. In this newer, recreational diary, the listing of events is replaced by a linked narrating of events, and an

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implied writer (the diarist) is given a notional location in time and space. The history of pious diary writing allows for a useful case study of the emergence of the recreational diary.

The End of the Pious Diary? Thoresby’s reading of and comments on diaries suggest that pious diaries were relatively common among Presbyterians. Does this suggest that the genre may have died out with Presbyterianism? Presbyterianism in England was expiring even within Thoresby’s lifetime (1658–1725). When Thoresby left the Presbyterians to conform, in the 1690s, he was not alone. Rupp gives a picture of how things stood: ‘In 1660 the English Presbyterians were a formidable body, exceeding all other Nonconformists in learning, numbers, and influence … There was nothing to suggest that within fifty years their discipline would have collapsed, and that the reformed tradition in theology, which they had championed would have disintegrated or evolved … into a liberal unorthodoxy, while many of their churches turned to Calvinist congregationalism or embraced Unitarianism’ (Rupp, 1986, p. 108). Northern Presbyterians could not always even pay their ministers properly, and some ministers had to bolster their incomes by other means. James Clegg, for example, a Presbyterian minister working in Northumberland in 1708, practised medicine to augment his income (Clegg, 1978, p. xiii). An eloquent witness to the decline of his community, he wrote, ‘Religion decays and dwindles among the dissenters and wickedness is at a provoking height everywhere’ (p. 3). Since Presbyterianism itself was in decline, it would hardly be surprising if pious diaries such as Thoresby’s also started to die out. But some Presbyterians neglected the genre even while they adhered to their community and its theology. One example is the diarist Sir David Hamilton, a physician to Queen Anne and a lifelong Presbyterian who, as well as writing a diary, published two anonymous spiritual tracts. The tracts entirely conformed to Presbyterian thinking, and the title of one of them, The Inward Testimony of the Spirit of Christ (1701), recalls spiritual autobiographies or conversion narratives. Yet Hamilton’s diary is quite different from the pious diary as described above, and Hamilton was aware of the difference. He writes about his diary in his spiritual autobiography, The Private Christian’s Witness: [I was] Trained up with the continued Example of performing all the Duties of Hearing, Reading, and Praying, with that powerful influence,

158 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator that publick or private Devotion were seldom neglected … my natural disposition inclining me more to Observation, than to much talk in Conversation, led me not only to observe the Discourse and Actions of others, but even to remark the Events attending my Life, with Reflections thereupon, without any regard to it as Duty, or productive of the knowledge of Divine Things, but purely as the effect of natural Curiosity, inducing me both to observe and to record them with great pleasure in reviewing them. (Hamilton, 1697, pp. 2–3)

Opposing ‘the effect of natural Curiosity’ to ‘the knowledge of Divine Things,’ Hamilton separates his diary entirely from his religious life. Like Thoresby, he sees that keeping a certain kind of diary can be a religious duty (‘an irksome task,’ in Thoresby’s words). But unlike Thoresby he does not regard the pious diary as the only kind of diary he ought to write. He gives no account of his diary as functional, but merely says that it gave him ‘great pleasure’ to review the events of his life. Given Hamilton’s piety, why did he turn away from the Presbyterian diary? Living as he did in the midst of the court, he may have been more sensitive to the general scorn heaped on Nonconformists than Thoresby was. There is certainly a suggestion of ridicule of pious diaries in a series on diaries run by The Spectator in 1712. In the first paper of the series, a man very similar to Thoresby is introduced, one ‘bred to Trade’ who has retired into other pursuits. An early editor of The Spectator indicates in a footnote that the real-life target was probably a Nonconformist: This honest man being of greater Consequence in his own Thoughts, than in the Eye of the World, had for some years past kept a Journal of his Life … Since the Occurrences set down in it mark out such a Road of Action, as that I have been speaking of, I shall present my Reader with a faithful Copy of it … MONDAY, Eight a Clock. I put on my Cloaths and walked into the Parlour … TUESDAY, BEING HOLLIDAY, Eight a Clock. Rose as usual … WEDNESDAY, Eight a Clock. Tongue of my Shooe Buckle broke. Hands but not Face … 1

‘It is said that this journal was a banter on a member of a congregation of Indepen-

dents. A Mr. Nesbit … was the minister of this congregation, and was constantly consulted on every subject by the journalist.’ (Nichols)

(Bond, 1965, vol. 3, pp. 153–6)

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The satire is tellingly accurate. The entries structured around the times of day, the banal and repetitive subject matter, the absence of personal opinion – all these are found in real Nonconformist diaries like Thoresby’s. If this sort of ridicule was widespread, it would go some way to accounting for Hamilton’s neglect of the Presbyterian diary in favour of a different kind of diary. If Hamilton, a Presbyterian familiar with Presbyterian diaries and selfconscious about keeping a different kind of diary, is any example, we can conclude that by the late 1690s the Presbyterian diary was losing favour even among Presbyterians. By 1715, some Presbyterians were unaware of the genre altogether. Dudley Ryder, a Presbyterian law student living in London at that time, kept a very different kind of diary from Thoresby’s, and showed none of Hamilton’s self-consciousness about doing so. Ryder’s diary in many ways is the antithesis of the seventeenth-century pious diary. The pious diary was not confidential but written in the expectation that it would be read by others, but Ryder’s diary abounds with confidential reports, especially of his failures in love (see, for example, 12–14 June 1716; Ryder, 1939, pp. 256–7). The pious diary lamented time wasted in mere recreation (Thoresby describes evenings of jollity as ‘dry drunkeness’; YAS MS 26, p. 140), but Ryder records his secular pleasures without guilt. The pious diary limited expressions of feeling and opinion to formulaic lamentations for sin, and to prayer. To Ryder, however, it is entirely natural to confess his feelings in his diary, and his religious failings are expressed easily and colloquially: ‘I was very much displeased with myself that I could not be much affected with such a posture of affairs, that the death of a relation made so little impression upon me and I did what I could to raise a little concern in me’ (Ryder, 1939, p. 91). Where the Presbyterian diarist is content with notes and formulae, Ryder makes serious attempts to polish his style: ‘I find I am apt to be at a loss for words to express my thoughts and I thought it would be of great help to me in this respect to translate polite authors: it would give me a copia of words and make them flow easier from me’ (p. 258; on p. 2 he resolves to model his letters on Addison’s). Whereas Thoresby and his contemporaries began diaries under instruction and for explicitly religious purposes, Ryder makes no mention of a religious motive in discussing his diary writing, but indicates that he began to keep a diary upon a friend’s ‘hint’ when he was twentyfour (p. 5). Even when he comes across a much older diarist, Ryder is not shocked to hear that the old man finds it ‘diverting’ rather than

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mortifying to recall his past doings: ‘[A friend’s grandfather] told me he kept a constant diary from his going from Oxford to the end of his life which was writ in longhand and is now with him. He says it is very diverting to read the younger part of his time, for he used to take notice of many little simple trifling occurrences in his life, especially in the time of his courtship of which there is a very particular account’ (p. 177). Ryder’s and Thoresby’s diaries suggest that the two men came from radically different spiritual and theological backgrounds, yet in fact they were similar. Ryder’s entries make it apparent that family prayers and sermons were as regular an occurrence, and as emotional, in his life as in Thoresby’s (Ryder, 1939, pp. 113, 166, 275, 331). He engages in arguments about Calvinist theology: ‘Mr Owen lay at our house and at night he and I had some little dispute about predestination’ (p. 177). He also feels a loyalty to the dissenting community at large and even establishes a dissenters’ club: ‘Our club is set up with a design to encourage the dissenters … a weekly paper in defence of them and whatever tended to encourage those true Protestant principles of private judgement and liberty of conscience’ (p. 362; in later years Ryder, like Thoresby, conformed to the Anglican church). But the unselfconscious absence of piety from Ryder’s diary suggests that pious diaries like Thoresby’s were in decline among Presbyterians before their community expired. If so, the decline was probably more advanced in London than in the north. James Clegg, once again, was a Presbyterian minister working in Northumberland while Ryder studied in London. All the defining features of Thoresby’s diary are found in Clegg’s diary of the 1720s. Like Thoresby, Clegg divides each entry into three parts, includes only occasional anecdotes amid routine entries, describes emotional affairs indirectly, explicitly excludes politics, laments his sins in formulaic language, and records experiences of grace: ‘This Day by the [Lord’s] goodness I and my dear wife had a great deliverance, a headstrong horse boggled and ran away with us in a very dangerous way … yet neither of us Received the least harm. Adored be infinite goodness!’ (December 1709; Clegg, 1978, p. 2). On birthdays and at New Year, Clegg, like Thoresby, usually laments wasted time: ‘20. This is my birthday, I am now 31 years old, so long hath a mercifull God spared an useless creature and hitherto he hath helped me; oh! may I study to make more suitable returns than I ever have done’ (20 October 1710; p. 3). So the Presbyterian Dudley Ryder, living in London, showed no knowledge of pious diaries like Thoresby’s, while his contemporary

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Clegg, living in the north, adhered faithfully to the traditional model. Indeed, in those parts of the kingdom where Presbyterianism was dominant, diaries like Thoresby’s continued to thrive for some time, alongside more recreational ones like Ryder’s. The Northern Irish minister John Kennedy kept a pious diary very similar to Thoresby’s in the 1720s, and in nineteenth-century Scotland it was still possible to find conversion narratives like those of the godly in the seventeenth century (Stevenson, 1920, pp. 358 ff; GU MS Gen. 778). But Ryder’s diary is interesting not only because he was a Presbyterian who broke with the pious model but because it represents a new genre in being recreational. Thoresby’s generation of diarists wrote for particular, more or less known readers – in his case, his sons. The new generation of diarists creates an assumed reader. Thoresby and his contemporaries wrote for a reader interested in the content of what is recorded. Ryder’s generation assumes a reader who is emotionally engaged with the recorder. This distinction becomes apparent in a comparison of Ryder’s diary with that of one of Thoresby’s and de la Pryme’s acquaintances, William Nicolson. Nicolson, like de la Pryme, was an Anglican clergyman who knew Thoresby through antiquarian circles. This is his diary entry for the day of his instalment as bishop of Carlisle in 1702: Nov. 18. Wednesday. I took the Oaths, and my place, in the House of Lords. An Appeal lodged; and adjourned. In the House of Commons Sir J. Packington’s friends Voted the Bishop of Worcester Unchrist[i]an, Malitious, &c. and ordered an Address to Her Majesty to remove him from being Almoner. His Son (Mr Lloyd) to be prosecuted by the Attourney Generall when his priviledge of Convocation is out. Archdeacon Hutton dined with me; resolveing to be good. (Nicolson, 1985, p. 128)

There are some clear and perhaps predictable differences in this entry from those in Thoresby’s diary. Thoresby usually omits the first person pronoun, where Nicolson begins with ‘I took the Oaths’. Like de la Pryme and unlike Thoresby, Nicolson presupposes an interest in public affairs. Thoresby and Nicolson are writing different kinds of diaries, just as Thoresby and de la Pryme are writing different kind of diaries. Yet all three share one characteristic which distinguishes them from the next generation of diarists, as represented by Ryder: none assumes a notional reader who enters into an imaginary relationship with the diarist. Compare this excerpt from Ryder’s diary:

162 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Saturday, June 11. went after dinner to John’s Coffee House. Met with Mr. Witnoons and Jackson and Smith and two or three more. Discoursed about the impeachments. (Ryder, 1939, p. 32)

Nicolson lists the events of his day without creating a sense of narrative: ‘Nov. 18. Wednesday. I took the Oaths, and my place, in the House of Lords’ – each action is listed discretely, and there is no time line on which to locate his actions. But Ryder assumes a reader whose chief interest is in Ryder himself rather than in the events of the day. So he tells his reader that he went to the Coffee House ‘after dinner’, a fact of no importance except for someone imaginatively engaged with the diarist. He includes details – that it was John’s Coffee House he went to – which would be of no interest to a reader looking for a public chronicle. He assumes his reader will know who Jackson and Smith are, that is, a reader who is intimate with Ryder himself. Nicolson, on the contrary, feels he must record that the bishop of Worcester’s son is called Mr Lloyd. A similar difference can be seen between the diaries of John Sharp, Thoresby’s correspondent and mentor, and those of Thoresby himself. Unfortunately, only a few fragments of Sharp’s diary have survived, embedded in an early-nineteenth-century biography. I was this morning at the early sacrament at Whitehall, where I received with as great devotion and with as hearty a sense of God and his goodness as ever I did in my life. I have most heartily implored the continual presence of his Holy Spirit to guide and conduct me in all my thoughts, words, and actions while I am at London; and that I may never, out of fear, or for favour do any thing that I ought not … I was this noon so peevish and disordered in my mind, that in truth I could not say my prayers in the chapel; nor could I help it, being incapable of thinking. I impute it to my dispiritedness upon taking the vomit. (November 1708 and October 1711; Sharp, 1825, vol. 2, pp. 84, 86)

Clearly, Thoresby uses his diary as a vehicle for performing prayer, whereas Sharp merely records prayers that have been made. Thoresby invariably records his emotional state during prayers with either an expression of gratitude to God or a lamentation; in either case, his assumption is that the record is of interest because it confirms the prior belief that he, like all humans, is a ‘worm’ who can never be too

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penitent, and that anything good about him comes from God’s providence. Sharp, on the contrary, assumes that his feelings during prayer are of interest because he is of interest: he records feeling peevish in chapel not with a lamentation but with a suggested explanation (‘taking the vomit’). Thoresby’s reader is interested in Thoresby as a type of the godly man; Sharp’s reader is interested in Sharp as a friend. Thoresby therefore either lists or recites, and Sharp makes one side of a polite conversation. These differences – between Nicolson’s diary and Ryder’s, and between Thoresby’s diary and Sharp’s – are mirrored in these between Sir David Hamilton’s diary and that of the woman who transcribed it, Lady Mary Cowper. Hamilton belonged to Nicolson’s generation, Cowper to Ryder’s. Mary, Countess Cowper was lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne. For one year, 1714, her diary overlaps with Hamilton’s. In method and in avowed intention, their diaries are very similar. Here is her statement: 1714 The perpetual Lies that One hears have determined me, in spite of my Want of Leisure, to write down all the Events that are worth remembering whilst I am at Court; and although I find it will be impossible for me to do this daily, yet I hope I shall be able to have an Hour or two once a Week and I intend this only for my own Use, it being a rough Draft. (Cowper, 1865, p. 1)

Like Hamilton’s, Cowper’s method is to make notes as she goes along and write them up into entries regularly. Like Hamilton, she is motivated to write by her privileged position at court, although she centres her account not on the queen but on the princess of Wales. But in its approach to the reader, her account is much more like Ryder’s. It recalls the novel in its portrayal of a continuum of emotional exchange by means of minute physical detail: In the morning, by Eleven, I waited upon the Princess. I found the Duchess of St. Albans in the outward Room upon the same Errand. She went in first and kissed the Princess’s Hand, and I followed. The Princess, when I had done it, took me up and embraced me three or four times, and said the kindest Things to me – far beyond the Value of any Riches. (p. 7)

Unlike Hamilton, Cowper regards such novelistic observation of her mistress as central to her historical account. Nor does she exclude

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her own feelings from the account, as in her ‘far beyond the Value of any Riches’. She makes a moral judgment, but one which is inspired by affection rather than being a generalized expression of public morality, and this judgment, furthermore, constitutes an expression of personal opinion. This conversational style, incidentally, is consonant with the values Cowper betrays. Conversation implies friendship, and Cowper places a high value on friendship: the princess’s friendship takes the form of ‘saying the kindest thing’, and is praised as ‘beyond the Value’ of wealth. Both Hamilton’s style and his values are very different: Complimenting Her [the queen] Upon the Dutch coming into the Peace, I wish’d Smiling Providences might accompany so Pious a Life as Hers. For if otherways it was satisfy’d it was from the failure of others about Her and not from Her Self, to which she said she hop’d in Time that satisfaction would be brought about to every body. (30 December 1712; Hamilton, 1975, p. 47)

Hamilton places a subordinate element at the beginning of his sentence, with the result that the personal pronoun and main verb are less prominent than the abstraction ‘complimenting’. Both Hamilton and Cowper praise a royal mistress, but what Hamilton records could not be further from ‘The Princess … said the kindest things to me’. Hamilton’s formal compliment embodies an ideology of deference rather than of affection, and the position he gives to the first person pronoun reflects such a deference. He includes a personal comment only as a conclusion to an exact record of words spoken. Cowper reverses these priorities, and submerges exact words in opinion, as in ‘the kindest things’. The older diarist erases his personal life in submission to his sovereign and to history, whereas the younger one serves both history and her sovereign by drawing up a narrative of her own feelings and opinions. At least one of Lady Cowper’s nineteenth-century readers responded to the friendly relationship she portrays. Lord Campbell, who used the diary in writing his history of Queen Anne’s reign, commented: ‘a charming Diary of the second Lady Cowper … It remains in MS, but it well deserves to be printed, for it gives a more lively Picture of the Court of England at the commencement of the Brunswick Dynasty than any I have ever met with’ (Cowper, 1865, p. v). Lord Campbell’s response is a far cry from Thoresby’s hope that the diary of an exemplary clergyman might be printed for the sake of the pious inspiration it would provide.

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‘Charming’ suggests not only that the diary should be read for recreation, but also that the reader has an affectionate, personal relationship with the diarist, that it is the writer’s personality rather than her value as spiritual exemplar or historical witness which makes her worth knowing. ‘Charming’ is not a word likely to be used for Nicolson, de la Pryme, or Thoresby. The seventeenth-century diary implies an underlying model of the reader as a speaker, not because it was read aloud (although there is no reason to believe it was not) but because it was a functional public or semi-public text. It listed discrete actions and events and created no special relationship between diarist and reader. Many diaries consisted to a large extent of prayer, a speech form subject to particular constraints whether performed in public or in private. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, a new kind of diary emerged. It was recreational rather than functional, written solely for the entertainment of the diarist. It located the diarist within a narrative and created a relationship with an implied reader in an intimate and confidential setting. By virtue of these characteristics, the eighteenth-century diary is consistent with a rise in the model of the reader as a hearer. In the next chapter, I shall suggest that the emergence of the recreational diarist is paralleled by the rise of the narrator in narrative prose.

6

The Birth of the Narrator

In previous chapters, I suggested that there was a significant increase in the number of fluent silent readers at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, and that this increase led to important changes in prose style and genre because fluent silent reading assumes a model of the reader as a hearer rather than a speaker. I suggested that writers using a model of the reader as a hearer found it easier than their predecessors to introduce longer and more frequent pauses into their writing by means of punctuation, and that greater use of pauses promoted an increase in the number of sentences in the form of autonomous units bounded by pauses. Sentences of this kind represented a significant departure from the previous long strings of loosely connected clauses, by means of which the reader as speaker had been allowed to continue speaking without a pause until a topic boundary was reached. I related these insights to changes at the level of genre in letter writing and diary writing. In this chapter, I consider prose narrative in the light of the change from the model of the reader as a speaker to that of the reader as a hearer. I discuss both fictional and non-fictional prose narratives, and the fictional narratives include straightforward texts like those of Haywood as well as texts more easily categorized as satires, parodies, or spoofs, such as Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. My analysis concentrates on technical features of prose narrative and reader comprehension which are relevant to all the genres I discuss, since we can assume that all the writers of these works shared the common goal of having the works understood by readers. As evident in my discussion of the secondary literature, studies of prose narrative in the period have concentrated on the novel. But the conclusions I draw are applicable to prose narrative generally.

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Research on the novel’s origins in the long eighteenth century has produced scholarship which greatly illuminates our understanding of both the genre and the period, but there remains a rather limited awareness of the linguistic complexities of the transition from more oral to more literate forms of communication. In particular, the transition to silent reading has not been considered in depth in relation to the novel. In an attempt to redress the balance with respect to the novel and to address other kinds of prose narrative in the period, I discuss the work of psychologists and linguists on silent readers’ comprehension of movements in narrative time and space. I relate their insights to the difference between narratives which assume a reader as a speaker and those which assume a reader as a hearer, particularly by drawing on research into the communicative importance of gesture. I also consider certain features of textual cohesion which aid narrative comprehension. I present evidence from a range of writers, from major literary figures such as Defoe, Behn, Haywood, and Swift to obscure writers of memoirs, of changes in narrative practice; the evidence from the lesser-known writers indicates that the changes were not confined to the most gifted or able writers but reflected a very broad development. My conclusion is that the changing conception of the reader had a dramatic consequence in the development of the narrator in prose narrative: the narrator’s was a voice which could orient a silent reader as a hearer in time and space in a way different from that relied on by a reader as a speaker addressing a live audience. Finally, I return to the literature on the rise of the novel and consider the existing research on changes in prose style generally.

Literacy, the Early Novel, and Other Prose Narratives In my introduction to this volume, I quoted Terry Castle’s verdict on research into the eighteenth-century novel: ‘The ball of eighteenth century novel studies has been definitively kicked through the goal posts’ (quoted in Davis, 2000, p. 480). Castle is certainly right in suggesting that the questions of how and why the novel arose have received detailed attention from a wide range of distinguished scholars (for a representative selection of recent scholarship, see Reconsidering the Rise of the Novel [2000], special issue, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 12[2–3]). It is also true that ever since Watt’s seminal The Rise of the Novel the question of literacy has been central to studies of the novel’s origins. Hunter, for example, has examined the extent and rate of growth of literacy in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in his view an

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important component of the novel’s early successes (Hunter, 1990, pp. 66–7 and elsewhere). It might seem, therefore, that focusing on the transition from ubiquitous reading aloud to widespread silent reading will have little to add to the history of the novel. Yet the impressive body of work on the early novel still lacks a sophisticated historical understanding of the complex interaction of the oral and the literate, such as presented by Fox (2000), and an awareness of linguistic research on different levels of competence in reading and writing, such as in the contributions to Sweet and Snow’s volume (2003), and their consequences for all prose narrative. Hunter’s work on the context for early novels, for example, includes a detailed analysis of statistics on literacy and publishing: demonstrating that literacy swelled in the early seventeenth rather than the eighteenth century, he challenges Watt’s account of the novel as emerging in the early eighteenth (Hunter, 1990, pp. 66–7); he also gives consideration to the significance of silent reading in private spaces (pp. 41, 48). Yet he does not explore a possible relationship between the expansion of fluent silent reading and the rise of the novel. The insights of linguists and psychologists of reading into the comprehension of narrative, particularly the complex process of understanding the movements of protagonists through time and space, can be brought to bear in my investigation of the two models of reader. The reader as a speaker can use gesture and intonation in a space shared with the listener in order to indicate motion in time and space in his or her narrative. The reader as a hearer, however, is without these physical aids to comprehension. As a result, narrative in the eighteenth century developed an alternative means of orienting the reader: the narrator, defined in this chapter as a being with a consistent though notional location in time and space from which he or she can enable the reader as a hearer to construct successive mental models of the protagonists’ environments and so follow the action.

Storytellers and Narrators Where a writer imagines a reader speaking the text, his or her narrative has some of the qualities of a playscript. A playscript, unlike a story written for silent reading, requires the participation of an actor or actors to be fully realized. In performance, the audience might notice or understand many features which are unclear to the silent reader of the script (see Jajdelska, 2007, for a discussion of Pepys’s treatment of texts as

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scripts). In what follows, I argue that writing stories as scripts gave opportunities to writers which were unavailable to a later generation who assumed their readers were silent hearers. Before I elaborate on the nature of these opportunities, some clarification of terminology is called for. The term ‘narrator’ can be used in both a broad and a narrow sense. The broad sense is ‘one who tells a story,’ whether that person is real or imagined; this is the sense given in most dictionary definitions. Literary scholars, however, by ‘narrator’ often mean a purely imaginary person, a voice emerging from a text to tell a story. It is this sense which allows Abbott to talk of ‘forms of narrative … that do not have narrators’ (Abbott, 2002, p. 63). Narrators of this kind include omniscient narrators, that is, narrators not only who are imaginary but who exceed normal human capabilities in their knowledge of events. To avoid confusion between the broad and the narrow sense of narrator, I use the terms Storyteller and Narrator. A Storyteller is like the actor for a playscript. The Storyteller brings the text to completion through performance. Not only is it possible to meet individuals taking the role of Storyteller, the story is fully realized only when that happens. A Storyteller can be compared to ‘an actor’ in stage directions, or ‘the rhapsode’ of Homeric verse. A Narrator, on the other hand, cannot be encountered in person and indeed may well have properties (such as omniscience) which a real person could not have. Although particular individuals can read the text aloud, it is not necessary for them to fully inhabit the role of ‘Narrator’ in order to make the text complete; indeed, it would not be possible for them to do so. The Storyteller belongs to the model of the reader as speaker whereas the Narrator belongs to that of the reader as hearer. Abbott points out that the device of the narrator is ‘like the subject of point of view, with which it overlaps in a number of ways’ (Abbott, p. 64). He goes on to discuss this ‘vaguer and more disputed term point of view’ (p. 66). For some, ‘point of view’ might refer to a synoptic point from which a Narrator tells a story. According to this definition, the temporal point of view in the following extract from a recent novel is present time, and the physical point of view is ‘somewhere from which Blackpool and Scotland can be viewed’: One is never prepared for the manner in which home changes over time. That tea room was twenty-nine years ago. Scotland was my mother’s world, and my years in Blackpool were spent in pastoral oblivion, a kind of homelessness which has followed me everywhere. (O’Hagan, 2006, p. 5)

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For other readers, ‘viewpoint’ is the lens of a particular character at the time of the story (rather than the time of the telling), a lens which might change from one section of the story to the next. The experience offered the reader is sometimes described as ‘focalization’: ‘Frequently, the narrator is our focalizer. Just as we hear her voice, we often see the action through her eyes. But this is not by any means always the case. In [a] scene from Madame Bovary Flaubert’s narrator maintains a strict, external third-person narrative voice but lets us look through the eyes of someone else’ (Abbott, p. 66). Abbott defines focalization as ‘the position or quality of consciousness through which we “see” events in the narrative. In English and North American criticism, the phrase point of view has been used for this concept, or something quite close to it’ (Abbott, p. 190). This account of the silent reader’s experience as ‘tracking’ the story through a character’s eyes independently of the narrator has some support from psychological and neurological research. Indeed, for many brain scientists ‘point of view’ appears to be a ‘micro’ feature of a text, varying from section to section, rather than a ‘macro’ feature, like the present-tense, ‘somewhere-outside-the-action’ location of the narrator in the first example: Readers of narrative often comprehend the depicted events by assuming the perspective of a character … [and by] mentally representing his or her emotional states. (Mar, 2004, p. 1416) Merely making a character the subject of the narrative statement sufficed to establish his as the dominant point of view. (Black, 1979, p. 187)

Silent readers may adopt ‘micro’ points of view through ‘following’ the experience of one or more characters in the story, as well as a ‘macro’ point of view from which the narrator perceives the events of the entire story. To avoid confusion between these different senses of ‘point of view,’ I use ‘anchor’ to represent the location in time and space from which a Narrator organizes a story, and ‘focalizer’ to describe the assumed perspective from which the reader perceives the action at any given point in the story.

Constraints on Stories with Narrators There is a sizeable body of research on how silent readers comprehend narratives. Black’s findings show that ‘a preference for a consistent point

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of view pervades narrative comprehension, memory, and production’ (Black et al., 1979, p. 187). More recently, Rall and Harris have found that even very young children show the same preference (Rall and Harris, 2000). These psychologists are using ‘point of view’ in the sense of ‘focalizer.’ It follows that narratives for silent readers should clearly signal any changes in focalization and avoid changing focalizer too swiftly. This conclusion is consistent with Emmott’s research on narrative comprehension. She discusses the importance of mental models of context in narrative comprehension, and the importance of a state in which the ‘illusion of situatedness and embodiment in specific contexts within a fictional world is achieved’ (Emmott, 1999, p. 58). She draws attention to an important problem in our understanding of narrative comprehension: In certain cases [of narrative] linguistic forms cannot be interpreted without information from much earlier in a text and […] there therefore needs to be some mechanism for maintaining this information in memory until it is needed again. These ‘long-distance links’ … can be contrasted with the processing involved in examples of the ‘John hit Henry. He fell to the ground’ type … where the referent of the pronoun has been recently mentioned and the appropriate individual is selected by means of a cohesive link (‘hit’/ ‘fell’, in this case) which spans only the two-sentence example. (p. 10)

Emmott draws on the work of a wide range of educational psychologists, cognitive scientists, and linguists in an attempt to solve this problem. She concludes that readers build mental models of contexts and retain these over even very long stretches of text. A later reference to a particular person or thing can therefore be understood not by attempting to remember the last appearance of the referring word in the text, but by locating the person or thing in the mental model of context. The distinction can be summarized as a contrast between the ‘referent in the text model’ and the ‘referent in the mind model’ (pp. 200–4). Emmott also suggests that even in short-term anaphoric reference, it may be necessary to refer to the mental model of context in order to understand the relationship between a pronoun and its antecedent: ‘Apart from the need to explain how a pronoun can be interpreted when an antecedent is missing, a discourse perspective on grammar throws new light on some of the fundamental assumptions of grammatical theory … Even in cases where a full antecedent is present, it may be that “long-distance” information is still necessary to determine which of two potential

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antecedents is the appropriate one’ (p. 13 and elsewhere). Emmott is careful to distinguish between these mental models of context and the kinds of abstract mental ‘map’ which some psychologists have researched: ‘By “context”, I do not mean the detailed spatial “maps” of a particular location that have been postulated by psychology researchers … Contextual information … provides “episodic” information about a configuration of characters, location, and time at any point in a narrative, rather than details about individual people and places’ (p. 104). Precise details of time and location may not be necessary for narrative comprehension. Instead, the reader requires enough information to make ‘orientational judgments,’ information about the following, as a minimum: ‘i) Which characters are present in the physical environment? ii) Where is the action located? iii) What is the approximate time of the action?’ (p. 103). It is not enough to track the point of view of whichever character is central at a given time: ‘the reader also needs to retain an awareness of the context beyond the focalizer and focalized’ (p. 126). The action of a story can, of course, move between different characters in different locations. But ‘once a configuration of character(s) and a location is established within a contextual frame, the reader can expect the character(s) to remain there (until there is some signal to the contrary)’ (p. 126). Emmott’s work suggests that a story written for a silent reader must create a Narrator who gives clear signals that a location has changed or that a character has left a location. The work of Black and of Rall and Harris also suggests that silent readers need clear indications that a focalizer has changed. This requirement constrains writers for silent readers in ways that do not affect writers for Storytellers.

Shared Space and the Storyteller Narratives written for a Storyteller can exploit the Storyteller’s physical presence as a tool for orientation, as well as his or her use of gesture and of pausing. That means the narratives can change location and focalizer more rapidly and with less (apparent) warning than those written for a silent reader can. Recent research has shown that gesture is not simply a useful addition to verbal communication but fundamental to understanding changes in location and movement within narrative. In a paper which provides a useful summary of earlier research on gesture, Özyürek gives compelling evidence that ‘speakers design their

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gestures for their addressees and therefore use them to communicate’ (Özyürek, 2002, p. 688). Özyürek discusses the representation of space through gesture and emphasizes the importance of ‘shared space’ in spoken narrative: Speakers attempt to use common space rather than their own space or the addressee’s space in designing their gestures … Speakers use shared space as a medium to represent the direction of motion rather than just as a medium in which to make their gestures visible to the addressees. One way to understand why gesture orientations changed [in the experiment] with representations of motion INTO and OUT is to think that speakers imagined landmark objects (e.g., building, room) to be located in the shared space. (Özyürek, 2002, p. 702)

A reader reading as a speaker – or, in this case, as a Storyteller – shares a space with his or her listeners and uses gesture to indicate narrative movements in space (and, potentially, time). The shared space becomes a stage on which movement can be dramatized. Özyürek’s findings are consistent with work on viewpoint in signed languages. As Emmorey has shown: The linguistic mechanisms used to express point of view in signed languages appear to be more explicit than in spoken languages. Both signers and speakers use linguistic devices to indicate whether utterances should be understood as expressing the point of view of the signer/speaker or of another person … Point of view … can be marked overtly (and often continuously) by a ‘referential shift’. Referential shift is expressed by a slight shift in body position and/or changes in eye gaze, head position, or facial expression). (Emmorey, 1996, p. 184)

A Storyteller conveys narrative movements in space (and time) in ways fundamentally different from those used by a Narrator. The gestures discussed by Özyürek are not, it would seem, at the level of consciousness. But a reader reading as a speaker in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries could support a narrative not only with these unselfconscious gestures, but also with an explicitly taught language of gesture. Any writer or reader trained in rhetoric (that is, all who had enjoyed more than a primary education) would know how to use gesture to indicate a range of emotions, always relying on a space shared

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with listeners. Roach has discussed the range of gestures available to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century actor, but his source texts were, it seems, directed equally at those participating in other occasions for public speech, ‘at the bar and in the pulpit as well as in “schools, theatres, and the mansions of the Muses”’ (Roach, 1985, p. 34, quoting Bulwer’s Chironomia). Stern has shown the extent to which, for an actor, learning a part meant learning the gestures and precise details of enunciation proper to the part rather than just learning the words (Stern, 2000, p. 11). In chapter 1, I discussed the extent to which learning to read in the seventeenth and earlier centuries was a matter of memorization. Given the overlap between the art of acting and rhetoric as it was taught in grammar schools and universities, it seems possible, if not likely, that memorizing any text, including narrative texts, involved memorizing appropriate accompanying gestures. Certainly, the performance of a text in the period must have been a far more physically lively affair than we are used to. The reader reading as a speaker, then, uses gesture, both intuitive and conventional, and shared space to convey narrative movements in time and space. In fact, the difference between the Storyteller and the Narrator in this respect is as fundamental as the difference between a sequence of dramatized episodes and a sequence of mental models, and the Storyteller, accordingly, is free of the constraints on the speed and signalling of successive mental models that bind the Narrator. The use of pausing by a skilled Storyteller also gives the writer writing for a reader who reads as a speaker an advantage. Emmott cites Chafe’s work on oral narratives to show how the Storyteller’s pauses can clarify changes in location: ‘In analysing the production of oral narratives, [Chafe] notes that context shifts are usually accompanied by hesitations by the speaker which are lengthier than the pauses which usually occur at the end of intonation units. This seems to suggest that the speaker needs time to readjust the context in his/her mind … Within the description of the fictional world itself … time-space reorientations represent the major boundaries’ (Emmott, 1999, p. 135, citing Chafe, 1994). In what follows, I use examples from late-seventeenth- and earlyeighteenth-century texts to illustrate how pausing, gesture, and shared space allowed writers for Storytellers to change location and focalizer more swiftly than could writers for Narrators. We shall see, moreover, that the dramatic nature of a Storyteller’s delivery gave writers opportunities to use dramatic monologue in narrative more effectively than could writers for Narrators.

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Storyteller Narrative: Changing Place There are linguistic signs in a wide range of texts that writers from the late 1600s and early 1700s exploited the freedoms outlined above. These writers include successful novelists and satirists like Defoe and Swift as well as female writers like Behn and Haywood and some obscure authors of genres such as biography and memoir. Defoe, for example, moves far more swiftly between focalizers at the beginning of Robinson Crusoe than would be possible for a writer writing for a Narrator: I Was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho’ not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country. (Defoe, 1719, p. 1)

The narrative opens with Crusoe’s birth in York. For a silent reader, this opening establishes the young Crusoe, living in York, as the focalizer. Yet Defoe then moves quickly on to another focalizer, Crusoe’s father, when he describes York as ‘that Country’. The term ‘that’ implies a focalizer based outside York, as Crusoe’s father is at this point in the story. Then, within the same sentence, the focus shifts back to York when the father is described as ‘a Foreigner of Bremen’. The father’s marriage appears to have taken place before the move to Hull, with ‘whence’ implying a move out of York. These swift movements would challenge the silent reader ‘hearing’ a Narrator. A Storyteller, however, can clarify the narrative using gesture and pausing. Bearing in mind the importance of punctuation as pausing discussed in chapter 2, we may notice that Defoe’s longest pause is after ‘Hull’. This is the point at which the focalizer switches from Crusoe to his father. The pause allows for a reorientation of the kind observed by Chafe in the work cited by Emmott above. In addition, the Storyteller makes the reorientation even clearer by emphasizing ‘he’ in order to establish a contrast with ‘I’. The use of italic type for the place names in this passage is also worth noticing. The work by Özyürek discussed earlier puts particular emphasis on the importance of gesture in indicating movement INTO, OUT, and ACROSS. Gesture of this kind would allow a reader reading as a speaker to indicate changes of location at critical points such as ‘that Country’,

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‘Hull’, and ‘York’. The use of ‘from whence’ to indicate the move from York to Hull after the marriage is particularly suggestive of an opportunity to gesture a change in location using movement. Swift, too, uses the Storyteller’s freedom to move from one focalizer to another, as in this passage from Gulliver’s Travels: When I left Mr. Bates, I went down to my Father; where, by the Assistance of him and my Uncle John, and some other Relations, I got forty Pounds, and a Promise of thirty Pounds a year to maintain me at Leyden: There I studied Physick two years and seven months, knowing it would be useful in long Voyages. (Swift, 1726, p. 2)

The shifts in location here are rapid; in the space of a few lines, the narrator moves from London to the provincial home and then to Leiden. The movement from London to his father’s is described by the narrator as ‘going down’, a phrase suggesting a focalizer at this point somewhat removed from both London and his father’s home and able to relate the two locations. Yet the initial point of focalization is not London in general, but the house of Mr Bates, a specific point in London. Emmott’s work shows that if a character is moved from one context to another, a silent reader needs to be told of the move explicitly and clearly. But because Swift can rely on the Storyteller’s use of shared space to indicate a character’s move from one context to another, he is free to move Gulliver from his father’s to Leiden with no more warning than ‘There’ at the start of the sentence. And even though the focalizer has moved to Leiden, Swift can still maintain an alternative focalizer based elsewhere which allows him to say ‘there’ rather than ‘here’ of his protagonist’s new context. Swift and Defoe are not unusual among writers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in exploiting the presence of a Storyteller to allow swift changes in the location of the focalizer. Here is a passage from Behn’s Oroonoko: After the total Defeat of Jamoan’s Army, which all fled, or were left dead upon the Place, they spent some time in the Camp; Oroonoko chusing rather to remain a while there in his Tents, than enter into a Place, or live in a Court where he had so lately suffer’d so great a Loss. (Behn, 1688, p. 84)

The focalizer initially is on a battlefield, from which the living have fled, and then swiftly moves to the place where the survivors are now. The swiftness of

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the transitions is reflected in the ambiguity surrounding ‘they’ in ‘they spent some time in the Camp’ – does this word refer to the protagonists or to those who fled the defeat? A similarly swift transition from one focalizer to another is revealed in the use of ‘this’ and ‘these’ in the following: Oroonoko was no sooner return’d from this last Conquest, and receiv’d at Court with all the Joy and Magnificence that cou’d be express’d to a young Victor who was not only return’d triumphant, but belov’d like a Deity, when there arriv’d in the Port an English Ship. This Person had often before been in these Countries, and was very well known to Oroonoko, with whom he had traffick’d for Slaves, and had us’d to do the same with his Predecessors. (pp. 85–6)

Since the only person mentioned in the first sentence is Oroonoko, ‘this Person’ at the beginning of the second sentence would be taken by a silent reader as a reference to him. On the other hand, the most recent geographical location alluded to is the England of ‘an English ship’. As a result, ‘these countries’ would likely be read by a silent reader as a reference to England. The whole clause would therefore be interpreted as meaning ‘Oroonoko had often been to England’. Yet it becomes clear that ‘this person’ is in fact the captain of the ship, a person who has never before been mentioned. In other words, ‘this Person’ marks an abrupt change in focalizer to the ship’s captain, and ‘these countries’ refers not to England but to Oroonoko’s current location. Behn can ignore the troubles a silent reader might have because her Storyteller signals the change in focalizer using gesture, shared space, pausing, and intonation. Swift, Defoe, and Behn are recognized as writers of distinction, but less distinguished writers could also exploit the narrative freedoms allowed by a Storyteller. This passage is from The Life and Death of Mrs. Margaret Andrews (1680), an anonymous, little-known, non-literary biography of a pious woman who died young: The occasion of her great trouble was this: Her Mother being careful about her Health, required an account of her of all that she eat or drank: But she was for a time perswaded, by others, to take a greater freedom in this than was allowed, and by Excuses to hide the Matter from her Mothers Knowledge. This, after a while, disturbed the peace of her Conscience, and brought much trouble into her Soul, which she for some time concealed. At length her Mother finding her very melancholy, asked what was the occasion of it. (Anonymous, 1680a, pp. 12–13)

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Here the author does not need to signal a change in focalizer from the mother to the daughter by clarifying the reference of ‘she’ or ‘her’ as a writer for a Narrator would. At ‘Her mother’ the focalizer is the mother – it is she who requires the account of food and drink. But because a Storyteller can signal a switch in focalizer back to the daughter, the next sentence can begin with ‘she’ yet refer not to the most recent antecedent (the mother) but to the daughter, Margaret. A silent reader, unaided by a more explicit signal that the focalizer has changed back to Margaret, might attribute the ‘greater freedom’ to the daughter and be moved without warning or clarification to the daughter as focalizer at ‘But she was’. A silent reader, lacking guidance from a Storyteller, might attribute the ‘greater freedom’ to the mother and be confused on reaching the words ‘Mothers Knowledge’. Another unremembered writer, Thomas Brown, writes the following in his 1701 life of ‘the late famous comedian’ Joseph Haynes: Her Son was put to St. Martin’s School, where his extraordinary progress raised admiration in all that knew him, Wit, Memory, and all that is capable of making a learn’d Man were found in him, which mov’d some Gentlemen, to have him sent to Oxford, here he lost nothing of the Applause he had before attain’d to, but adding dayly to it, Sir Joseph Williamson took him to be his Servitor, sometime after Sir Jos. was Elected Member of the University, from whence, call’d to the Helm of Affairs, was made Secretary of State, Hayns was still retained by him, and now begins a good Foundation of a thriving Fortune. (Brown, 1701, pp. 1–2)

Brown is not a writer of the class of Defoe, Swift, or Behn, but his quick transitions in location and focalizer are reminiscent of the passages quoted earlier from Gulliver and Crusoe. Like Defoe and Swift, Brown relies on a Storyteller to make explicit a rapid succession of movements around the country for which a writer writing for a silent reader would need to supply clearer signals from a Narrator. Haynes goes to Oxford in a passive construction (‘have him sent’), and Oxford becomes the focalizer’s location. The move to London is indicated by ‘call’d to the Helm of Affairs’, something a Storyteller could make clear but a Narrator would need to elaborate. Indeed, the narrative relies so heavily on the Storyteller that Haynes’s move to London is not stated but simply assumed, in the statement ‘was still retained by him’. London takes over with little warning for a silent reader as the context for the focalizer; Oxford’s ‘here’ rapidly becomes London’s ‘now’. Since Brown can rely

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on a Storyteller, he has no need for the slower and more explicit written signals a Narrator would provide to indicate change of context and focalizer.

Storyteller Narrative: Changing Time Writers for Storytellers can also switch rapidly from one temporal location to another, as in this passage from Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year: With this Resolution I went to Bed; and I was farther confirm’d in it the next Day, by the Woman being taken ill with whom I had intended to entrust my House and all my Affairs: But I had a farther Obligation laid on me on the same Side; for the next Day I found my self very much out of Order also; so that if I would have gone away, I could not, and I continued ill three or four Days, and this intirely determin’d my Stay; so I took my leave of my Brother, who went away to Darking in Surry, and afterwards fetch’d a Round farther into Buckinghamshire, or Bedfordshire, to a Retreat he had found out there for his Family. It was a very ill Time to be sick in, for if any one complain’d, it was immediately said he had the Plague; and tho’ I had indeed no Symptoms of that Distemper, yet being very ill, both in my Head and in my Stomach, I was not without Apprehension, that I really was infected; but in about three Days I grew better, the third Night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much refresh’d. (Defoe, 1722, pp. 16–17)

In analysing this complex set of time switches, the day of ‘the resolution’ in the first sentence might be taken as day one, and is the temporal location of the opening focalizer – called here focalizer A. For A, ‘the next Day’, when the woman is taken ill, is day two. But ‘the next day’ soon turns up again, in ‘the next Day I found my self very much out of Order also’, and seems to refer to day three. The use of ‘next’ here to refer to day two has shifted the focalizer from focalizer A, whose temporal location is day one, to focalizer B, whose temporal location is day two. The protagonist’s illness begins, then, on day three. He was ill for ‘three or four Days’, taking us to day five or day six. The length of the illness ‘intirely determin’d’ that the narrator would stay in London. So presumably he took leave of his brother on day five or day six. The brother then goes on a journey of unspecified length. Next, we read that ‘It was a very ill Time to be sick in’. The ‘It’ here requires another abrupt shift, this time backwards from the end of the brother’s journey to days three to six – so focalizer C has a temporal location of days three to six. For a

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silent reader, these changes in focalizer might be too rapid to follow easily. But a Storyteller’s audience can watch the different scenes succeed one another in the shared space without difficulty. Such an audience would also be able to follow the temporal shifts in the passage from The Life and Death of Mrs. Margaret Andrews: The occasion of her great trouble was this: Her Mother being careful about her Health, required an account of her of all that she eat or drank: But she was for a time perswaded, by others, to take a greater freedom in this than was allowed, and by Excuses to hide the Matter from her Mothers Knowledge. This, after a while, disturbed the peace of her Conscience, and brought much trouble into her Soul, which she for some time concealed. At length her Mother finding her very melancholy, asked what was the occasion of it. (Anonymous, 1680a, pp. 12–13)

The opening focalizer is temporally located at the point where her mother first demands that the daughter keep an account of her meals. From here, we move to a temporal location ‘after a while’, when the daughter’s conscience is first disturbed, and from this point there is another swift transition, to the period of ‘some time’, when the resulting trouble is concealed. Equally swiftly we move to the point where the mother breaks silence, ‘at length’. These shifts in temporal location are both rapid and (by the standards of a Narrator) vague; a silent reader might be unsure whether the ‘at length’ dates from the time of the initial requirement for an account of eating and drinking, or from the time when the daughter started to ignore this order, or from the time when the daughter’s conscience began to be troubled. But a Storyteller’s audience can follow the changes in time almost in the way a theatrical or television audience does, without difficulty in understanding the passing of time through a succession of scenes.

Storyteller Narrative: Monologue Writers for Storytellers have freedoms in addition to flexibility in changing context and focalizer. At the beginning of Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe’s father delivers a long speech to his son: My Father, a wise and grave Man, gave me serious and excellent Counsel against what he foresaw was my Design. He call’d me one Morning into his Chamber, where he was confined by the Gout, and expostulated very

The Birth of the Narrator 181 warmly with me upon this Subject: He ask’d me what Reasons more than a meer wandring Inclination I had for leaving my Father’s House and my native Country, where I might be well introduced, and had a Prospect of raising my Fortunes by Application and Industry, with a Life of Ease and Pleasure. (Defoe, 1719, p. 2)

This exhortation continues for nearly eight hundred words. For a silent reader, it might be somewhat boring, as it fails to advance the action in any way. But for a Storyteller it is a marvellous opportunity for dramatization. Defoe includes cues as to how the speech should be delivered. Crusoe’s father is in his chamber, confined by gout, so he should be represented as in pain and somewhat disabled. We are told that he ‘expostulated very warmly’ and later ‘press’d me earnestly, and in the most affectionate manner’ (p. 4). Towards the end of the speech Crusoe can see ‘the Tears run down his Face very plentifully’, and says that ‘he was so mov’d … he broke off the Discourse, and told me, his Heart was so full he could say no more to me’. For the Storyteller’s audience, this is a touching dramatic scene, with a distressed and enfeebled father alternating before them with a stubborn son who now, too late, sees the error of his ways. A scene of this kind would be more difficult for a writer writing for a Narrator, and would likely have to make explicit a great deal that the Storyteller enacts in performance, such as the changing emotional states of father and son.

Writing for a Narrator With the rise of silent reading, writers of narrative had to compensate for the Storyteller’s absence. Rall and Harris speculate that children as young as three or four create a mental ‘anchor’ to help them follow changes in narrative context and focalizer: ‘[Children] might adopt an “external” view of the scene being described by mentally locating themselves outside the space as an observer. Once the protagonist or the protagonist’s location is identified, they treat that location as a landmark or “anchor”. Children then code any displacement that is described in the narrative in terms of whether it consists of an approach toward the anchor or a retreat away from it’ (Rall and Harris, 2000, p. 206). My argument is that in order to compensate for the Storyteller’s absence, eighteenth-century writers began to create an anchor of this kind for a Narrator in order to guide the reader through changes in time, place, and focalization. It is precisely this ‘external viewpoint’ (or ‘notional

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location,’ as I call it) which becomes crucial in the transition from the reader who reads as a speaker to the reader who reads as a hearer. Since this notional location is as likely as not to be one that no real person could or would inhabit, the Narrator becomes a wholly different kind of person from the Storyteller. The silent reader does not simply imagine a person who serves the Storyteller’s function; instead, he or she imagines a different kind of person, one who cannot be fully embodied, to explicate the story. The importance of the Narrator’s notional location in giving a privileged perspective and the impossibility of the Narrator’s being a fully embodied being give rise to the omniscient narrator who dominates so much of the novel’s history. Indeed, the omniscient Narrator offers opportunities for developments in narrative form which compensate for the loss of the freedoms associated with the Storyteller, such as the freedom to include long monologues (or dialogues) which do not advance the action. The notional location has certain identifiable properties; there are limits to how far it can be from the action, for example. At the same time, it is not incorporated into the story and cannot be given precise coordinates. It is subject to physical constraints, but cannot be pinned down to a space occupied by a body in the real world. The Narrator is a new and strange kind of being – not fully embodied, not realized before the reader’s eyes as a full participant, yet subject to some limitations in physical time and space and able to address the reader directly, and indeed rather intimately. This account holds for first-person as much as for third-person Narrators: the first-person Narrator can be understood as divided in time and space from his or her former incarnation; the past self is a character in the action, the present self is the Narrator. Even with the assistance of the Narrator, silent reading of narrative is skilled work, and the new kind of narrative might prove challenging for readers with fewer opportunities to become fluent in silent reading. For the reader as a hearer, being able to ‘spell out’ texts (or ‘decode’ them, as literacy researchers would say) is not enough to guarantee comprehension of a narrative. As Emmott notes: ‘Research in educational psychology has shown that 10 per cent of children who can read a text aloud cannot make sense of what they are reading. The ability to decode individual words is there, but there is difficulty forming a coherent representation and one result of this is that there are problems interpreting pronouns’ (Emmott, 1999, p. ix). Emmott cites Yuill and Oakhill, who find that poor readers are often as proficient as their peers in decoding letters and words, but fall down in the construction of

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mental models: ‘In order to understand stories adequately, readers must be able to draw appropriate inferences spontaneously when they hear or read a story, so that an integrated representation or mental model of the text as a whole can be built’ (Yuill and Oakhill, 1991, p. 65). The reader who reads as a hearer, then, must acquire skills that the reader who reads as a speaker does not necessarily need. For that reason, we would not expect the use of the Narrator to become ubiquitous until fluent silent reading was universal.

The Birth of the Narrator: Evidence from Pirate Publications Rogers has discussed the importance of abridgements in the dissemination of texts like Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, and Pilgrim’s Progress during the eighteenth century. He shows that whereas adapted versions were often cheap productions for the poorest readers, that was not always the case: ‘Some of these are what would normally be described as ‘chapbooks’, that is they are short simplified texts, crudely produced for a very low price. Others are not: they are, rather, popularisations and piracies, which evidently assume a level of education and literary sophistication not much inferior to that required by the original work. Others fall in between these categories, and might be regarded as fringe-chapbooks’ (Rogers, 1982, p. 31). The same could be said of the pirate Pamela discussed below. None of these versions resembles the ballad abridgements of older texts commonly distributed as chapbooks (see St Clair, 2004, pp. 66–83). The versions discussed here, then, should not necessarily be seen as directed at less educated readers than the originals. Rogers describes the process of abridgement as involving both cutting and paraphrasing. He points out that the most important changes are sometimes made only to the opening passages, perhaps in order to give some small degree of legal protection, as the pirate could claim that the text in question was a different one from the original (Rogers, 1982, pp. 32ff). The motive for rewriting, then, may not in the first instance have been to improve clarity. And the fact that only the opening passages of the originals are significantly altered suggests that the revisions were not seen as an important part of the abridgement’s appeal. Nevertheless, it seems likely that, having decided to make changes to the original, the adapter would wish the changes to enhance the text rather than otherwise. The changes therefore can be seen as providing evidence of the direction of change in prose style in the period.

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This is the opening passage of one of the most popular abridgements of Robinson Crusoe, which was in print in a variety of editions from the earliest years of the work’s success throughout the eighteenth century: In the year 1632. I was Born at York, of a reputable Family. My Father was a Native of Bremen, who Merchandizing at Hull for some time gain’d a very plentiful Fortune and married my Mother in York, who receiv’d her first Breath in that country. And as her Maiden Name was Robinson, I was call’d Robinson Kreuznaer. (Defoe, 1726, p. 1)

The abridgement offers support for the findings of chapter 4, in that it converts the original – a lengthy sequence of loosely connected clauses – into bounded, autonomous sentences. A second change is the replacement of ‘my Father, being a Foreigner of Bremen’ with ‘My Father was a Native of Bremen’. The change from ‘foreigner’ to ‘native’ means that there is a consistent focalizer – the father – from that point to the marriage in York. The abridgement also creates a more consistent temporal location, from which a silent reader can follow the progression from the father’s birth in Bremen, to his move to Hull, his time spent making his fortune, and his marriage at York. The original, on the other hand, moves swiftly between temporal locations, starting with ‘settled first at Hull’, which already suggests that there will be a ‘second’ location, but which is followed by a return to Hull with ‘got a good Estate’ before the move to York with ‘lived afterward at York’, and then immediately followed by a move backwards in time to Hull with ‘from whence he had married my Mother’ and a reference to York as ‘that Country’. Abridgements of Gulliver’s Travels also suggest that Swift’s prose narrative came at a point of transition from the reader-as-speaker model to the reader-as-hearer model. This passage is from an abridgement of 1727, one year after the original appeared, and is followed here by Swift’s version: My Father, though a Man of no great Fortune, in Nottinghamshire, had that Care in the Education of his Children, that at the Age of Fourteen he sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge, where I continued, till, through some Alteration in his Affairs, he thought proper to remove me to London. I was there bound Apprentice to a Surgeon, Mr. James Bates, for the Space of Four Years; at the Expiration of which, for Three Years, I improv’d my self in the Study of Physick, at Leyden. (Swift, 1727, pp. 1–2)

The Birth of the Narrator 185 My Father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five Sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge, at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied my self close to my Studies; but the Charge of maintaining me (although I had a very scanty Allowance) being too great for a narrow Fortune, I was bound Apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent Surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years; and my Father now and then sending me small Sums of Money, I laid them out in learning Navigation, and other Parts of the Mathematicks, useful to those who intend to travel, as I always believed it would be some time or other my fortune to do. When I left Mr. Bates, I went down to my Father; where by the Assistance of him and my Uncle John, and some other Relations, I got forty Pounds, and a promise of thirty Pounds a year to maintain me at Leyden: There I studied Physick two years and seven months. (Swift, 1726, pp. 1–2)

In the original, an abrupt change of spatial location, to Cambridge, is managed before a change in temporal location, the narrator’s reaching fourteen, is made clear. For a reader reading as a hearer, this shift is potentially difficult to comprehend. The abridged version starts with the existing context (the father’s home in Nottinghamshire), modifies that context by having the narrator reach fourteen, and only then changes the spatial context to Cambridge, thereby making it easier for a reader reading as a hearer to adjust his or her mental models, as described in Emmott’s work. The abridged version also manages the change in context from Cambridge to London more easily for a reader reading as a hearer. The original covers the move to Cambridge and the end of the Cambridge period within only two clauses: ‘He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge, at fourteen years old, where I resided three years’. The abridgement assists the reader reading as a hearer in adjusting the mental model of context by inserting ‘where I continued till …’ as a bridge between the old and the new model. The original also uses ‘with whom I continued’ when describing the apprenticeship in London. But unlike the abridged version, the original then moves back again in time from the end of the four-year period to what happened during it: ‘with whom I continued four years; and my Father now and then sending me small Sums of Money, I laid them out in learning Navigation’. The anonymous author of a pirate adaptation of Richardson’s Pamela, The Life of Pamela of 1741, follows the original in the use of epistolary form, buts adds a telling passage at the beginning of the book:

186 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator IT was in that ever memorable Year 1720, when one half of the Island of Great Britain seemed under a strong Infatuation, and were precipitantly running on their own Ruin, that Mr. John Andrews, a very honest and worthy Man, who liv’d in a yeomanly way, partly as a Gentleman, and partly as a Farmer, upon a slender Estate of his own, in the County of Bedford, was over persuaded to sell his small Patrimony, to adventure what he received for the Purchase of it, in the South Sea Stock, with Hopes of raising a Fortune, that might enable him to support his Family, consisting only of himself, his Wife and one Daughter, without being obliged to follow that laborious Part of his Business himself, which took him too much off from that studious and contemplative way of living that he greatly desired his latter Days might be Crowned with. (Richardson, 1741, vol. 1, pp. 1–2)

This author neatly provides a Narrator whose location in time and space is fixed but notional. The Narrator is located somewhere far enough from the events depicted that he or she has a global view of them and can explain them to the reader reading as a hearer without sudden switches in focalizer. In the first place, the reader is given time to absorb the opening temporal location. The date is introduced before the events that pertain to it and is emphasized by the words ‘that ever memorable year’. The Narrator’s location in time, therefore, is sufficiently distant from 1720 to enable comparison to many other years (and the judgment that it was memorable) but sufficiently close to suggest personal experience of the year. The same approach is taken with physical location. The narrator is located somewhere allowing a synoptic view of ‘the Island of Great Britain’. Yet this location is close enough to Great Britain to allow an intimate knowledge of individuals’ affairs there. With the Narrator’s notional location well established, he or she is then able to orient the reader towards the estate of John Andrews in ‘the County of Bedford’. Again, the redundant descriptive term ‘the county of’, like ‘the island of’ earlier, gives the reader time to adjust to a new location. The narration of Andrews’s ruinous decision to buy South Sea stock can then be embarked upon without any bewildering sense for the reader of having moved from the context of Andrews’s farm to dealings in stock somewhere else, presumably London. That is because the narration is anchored in the Narrator’s notional but fixed location outside the events described. With the opening of this pirate Pamela, then, we see a full flowering of the Narrator in prose narrative.

The Birth of the Narrator 187

The Birth of the Narrator: From Haywood to Lennox As the century progressed, a new generation of writers began to write for readers as hearers by creating Narrators from scratch, as evident in a comparison between the work of Eliza Haywood, a contemporary of Swift and Defoe, and that of Charlotte Lennox, whose The Female Quixote appeared in 1752: As he spoke these words, he took her by the Hand, and conducting her thro’ his own into a little Chamber (which he had order’d to be made ready for that purpose) shut her into it; I follow’d to the Door, and seconded my Lady in her Desires, that I might be permitted to attend her there; but all in vain, he told me, he doubted not but that I had been her Confident in this Affair, and order’d me to quit his House in a few Days. As soon as he was gone out, I went into the Garden, and saunter’d up and down a good while, hoping to get an Opportunity of speaking to my Lady thro’ the Window, for I knew there was one that look’d into it. (Haywood, 1719, p. 18) Saying this, she flung out of the Room, her Woman following, leaving Arabella in such Confusion at a Behaviour of which she had never before had an Idea, that for some Moments she remained immoveable. Recollecting herself, at last, and conceiving, that Civility required she should endeavour to appease this incensed Lady, she went down Stairs after her, and stopping her just as she was going out of the House, intreated her to be calm, and suffer her to vindicate herself from the Imputation of being impertinently curious to know her Affairs. (Lennox, 1752, vol. 1, p. 88)

In the passage from Haywood, the (epistolary) speaker is a maid to the central character. Haywood writes as though for a Storyteller by switching focalizer rapidly between the protaganist and the maid. For example, the protagonist is the focalizer as she is led by her father through his chamber and shut into another one, but the maid is the focalizer as this journey is repeated as far as the door: ‘I follow’d to the Door’. The sequence involves an abrupt change in temporal location: the door is locked, and then without warning we move briefly back in time to the maid’s walk behind father and daughter to the door of the room. A similarly abrupt change occurs in the garden, where the maid is the

188 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

focalizer in hoping to speak from the garden into the room, and then, without warning, the mistress is the focalizer in her location inside the room with a window looking ‘into’ the garden. This shift could have been made smoother by the use of ‘out on to’ the garden instead of ‘into’, but such an approach to the transition is unnecessary where a Storyteller can dramatize the maid and the protagonist and thus clarify the rapid switches in focalization and location. Lennox, writing three decades later, no longer relies on the Storyteller’s powers of dramatization, but uses a Narrator to make clear the transitions in temporal and spatial location. There is a period of ‘some Moments’ between the departure of an angry guest and the protagonist’s realization that she will have to pursue the guest. Lennox allows the reader to absorb this passing of time by supplementing the ‘some Moments’ with ‘Recollecting herself, at last’. This marking of the transition from one time period to another also prepares the reader for a transition in physical location, from the room to the door of the house. This transition is further smoothed by the way the Narrator follows Arabella down the stairs, instead of simply stating that she went after the other character. Lennox creates a Narrator with a voice which can synthesize the novel’s spatial and temporal transitions from a notional location, fixed outside the events described, thereby allowing a silent reader to effect transitions in context and focalizer. The movement from the room down the stairs is described by a Narrator located neither in the room, nor on the stairs, nor yet at the entrance to the house. The Narrator is sufficiently close to all these to see what is going on, and sufficiently distant to negotiate the transitions in location for the reader. Similarly, the Narrator is located in time neither at the moment of the guest’s angry departure nor at the moment of the encounter at the door of the house, but sufficiently close to these to be aware of them, and sufficiently distant to integrate them as an aid for the reader reading as a hearer.

The Birth of the Narrator: Expository Texts I have discussed the emergence of the Narrator in relation to prose narrative, concentrating on shifts in viewpoint and temporal and spatial location in a story, and in relation to a range of fictional and non-fictional texts. Not only narrative texts, however, changed as the embodied reader as a speaker gave way to the silent reader as a hearer. Expository texts from the seventeenth century, in their

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treatment of time and space, also betray an assumption that the reader is a speaker. This can be seen in the work of Hannah Woolley, a non-literary author discussed in chapter 1. Her Gentlewomans Companion of 1675 gives advice on housekeeping to ladies and includes supplements for servants of different classes. For a present-day reader, trained in reading as hearing, there are some striking features in the way the text is constructed. There does not appear to be an organizing, global anchor from which the whole text has been conceived. On page 10, for example, there is a short biography of Woolley, but it is marked for the reader not by a title such as ‘an account of my life’, but by ‘a Short account of the life and abilities of the Authoress of this Book’. The biography is followed by a return to Woolley’s first-person voice. So a second (anonymous) voice enters the text to point to Woolley, rather like a compere introducing a performer. The presence of this voice is reinforced by the use of ‘this book’ where a later text would be likely to say, simply, ‘about the author’. The suggestion is of a real speaking reader who can point to the book as an object, rather than of the book itself as creating a voice which silently addresses the reader from a fixed but notional location. Elsewhere in the text, Woolley provides recipes for housekeepers, and once again there is an apparent absence of an overall organizing intellect. For example, a recipe for a particular cream is followed by ‘Another excellent and rare Cream’, where a present-day text might place both recipes under the heading ‘two recipes for creams’. The implication is that each recipe must be taken in succession because the reader as a speaker can encounter only one at a time. The reader as a hearer, however, can conceive of a notional location outside the text from which the material can more easily be organized in groups. Elsewhere, there are striking inconsistencies of address. In the following passage, there is a switch, without warning, from an address to scullery maids to an address to their mistresses: To Scullery-Maids in great Houses. There are several Rooms that you must keep sweet and clean, as the Kitchen, Pantry, Wash-house, &c. That you wash and scowre all the Plates and Dishes which are used in the Kitchen, also Kettles, Pots, Pans, Chamber-pots, with all other Iron, Brass, and Pewter materials that belong to the Chambers or Kitchen; and lastly, you must wash your own Linnen.

190 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator Thus Ladies; I have endeavoured to shew your Servant their duties in their respective places, and what qualifications they ought to have, which may enable and fit them for your service. I shall now return to the Compleatment of those Accomplishments which best become your noble and gentile extraction. (Woolley, 1675, p. 217)

This switch is potentially bewildering for the reader reading as a hearer, who thinks of the text as spoken by a single (though partially unembodied) voice. But the reader reading as a speaker will have no difficulty in imagining an assembled group of ladies and scullery maids, and in turning physically from one group to another as he or she reads. Woolley’s text is by no means unusual; examples of this kind abound in writing from the seventeenth century. Her text illustrates the dominance of the model of the reader as a speaker not only in prose fiction but also in the organizing principles of expository writing.

Prose Style, Time, and Space In my introduction to this volume, I quoted from Adamson’s account of changes in prose style in the period: ‘It is perhaps more than anything the new attention paid to connective strategies that causes the sea-change in prose which everyone notices in passing from renaissance to neo-classical styles’ (Adamson, 1999, pp. 604–5). One of the most important connective strategies discussed by Adamson is the substitution of pronouns for noun phrases. Why did this strategy become important? It can be argued that the explanation relates to the importance of mental models of context for the reader reading as a hearer. Emmott’s work, cited above, dwells at length on the comprehension of pronouns and the noun phrases to which they refer, and finds that readers cannot make sense of these by memory alone. Instead, the chains of pronouns which span the text (Emmott, 1999, p. 9) require the reader to construct mental models, as described earlier. I have suggested that the construction of mental models of context plays a key role in the transition from the reader-as-speaker model of reading to the reader-as-hearer model. The increased use of pronoun substitution, then, which for Adamson is among the most important features of a perceived ‘sea-change’ in prose, could well be a result of the rise of the reader as a hearer. Where a given focalizer is maintained for longer periods and any change in focalizer is well signalled, pronoun substitution is easier because the silent reader will assume a consistent focalizer when attempting to allocate the pronouns to referents.

The Birth of the Narrator 191

Adamson also stresses the role of ‘demonstratives and other discourse deictics (e.g. this, that, such)’ in the new prose style: Like anaphoric pronouns, they bind a discourse together, but in addition the semantic contrast between this and that gives the writer a means of distinguishing levels of textual or emotional distance. The so-called ‘existential there’ … also belongs to this network of textual signposts. Like this and that, it began life as a spatial deictic and it retains much of this deictic force in its discourse function, which has caused some linguists to name it the ‘presentative there’. (Adamson, 1999, p. 606)

Again, this change in prose style can be accounted for at least in part by the transition from a model of the reader as a speaker to one of the reader as a hearer. The discussion of Hannah Woolley’s text above showed that, for expository texts as much as for narratives, the reader reading as a speaker is oriented around the body of the reader and the space shared with the (real or imagined) listeners. The reader reading as a hearer, however, is oriented around a notional but consistent location in time and space, one which may be outside the action or discussion, but which allows the creation of mental models of context and which aids the transition from one context to another. This use of a consistent anchor makes the kinds of terms discussed by Adamson, terms rooted in concepts of space and distance, easier to comprehend. These changes in prose style are also compatible with the suggestion that greater numbers of people had reached a critical level in reading competence, the level required for fluent silent reading, well beyond that of decoding the text. Adamson mentions an increase in connectives such as ‘however’. There is evidence that children begin to use these effectively only after some years of intense reading instruction. Yuill and Oakhill, for example, cite research showing that there is a substantial increase in the use of connectives from the age of seven (Yuill and Oakhill, 1991, p. 32). Understanding anaphoric expressions (of the kind discussed above) are also the fruit of prolonged practice in reading. Yuill and Oakhill report research suggesting that at as late as nine years old, children still have some difficulty in understanding these expressions (p. 34). Their own research shows that poorer readers, even those fully competent at decoding letters and words, have difficulty in using connectives (p. 175). Hickman too reports that ‘cohesive uses and interpretations of referring expressions are a relatively late development’ in children’s reading (Hickman, 1985, p. 245), a finding supported by

192 Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator

Oakhill and Garnham (1988, p. 108). Perera discusses the advanced levels of reading and writing which require understanding of pronominal reference and sophisticated connectives (Perera, 1984, pp. 241–2). The features of prose style identified by Adamson as strikingly new, therefore, are entirely consistent with an account of a significant rise in the number of children with high levels of reading competence.

The Rise of the Novel Revisited Changes in prose style, therefore, are consistent with an account of an increase in the number of fluent silent readers and a consequent change in the way texts are comprehended. Can this account illuminate the history of the novel? As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, Hunter notes that the most substantial rise in early modern literacy took place in the early seventeenth century, and it is therefore difficult to relate the rise of literacy to the rise of the novel (Hunter, 1990, pp. 66–7 and elsewhere). But Hunter’s account of growing literacy can be reconciled with an eighteenth-century ‘rise’ of the novel if the importance of silent reading is taken into account. Literacy of some kind increased in the early seventeenth century, but that is not to say that fluent silent reading increased significantly at that time. Meanwhile, many features of the new genre of the novel crystallized in the early eighteenth century, at the same time as fluent silent reading may first have reached critical mass. I have argued that the birth of the Narrator can be understood as a response to a change in reading model. An understanding of the transition from the model of the reader as a speaker to one of the reader as a hearer can also illuminate other features of the early novel which have provoked discussion. Wall, for example, has discussed claims that early novelists (such as Defoe, Haywood, and Manley) create only a ‘vague’ sense of space in their narratives (Wall, 1998). She defends these writers, using Defoe as a test case, in part by arguing that the earlier eighteenth century was dominated by different norms of description, and in part by arguing that the richness of spatial and physical description in the texts has been underestimated. Although she offers convincing support for both these arguments, there is, of course, another possible explanation for the somewhat ‘alien’ presentation of spatial information in the work of Defoe and other early novelists. Defoe’s readers were trained to be readers as speakers. That meant that the physical setting for narrative events could be realized through their own bodies and in the spaces shared with listeners. Wall is

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right in pointing out that Defoe provides a wealth of spatial detail. But she does not address the fact that the detail is presented in a way which is potentially confusing for a present-day reader as a hearer owing to inconsistency with respect to focalizer (see, for example, p. 396). She does observe, however, that very often ‘the descriptive detail points out where to go and how to get there; Defoe’s physical detail is almost always, in that sense, a kind of stage direction, a prompter of action: rather than describing an object in stasis, the spatial detail points to actual or potential motion, to the province of narrative’ (p. 398). Wall’s notion of a ‘stage direction’ is perhaps not intended to be taken very seriously and will not necessarily work if applied wholesale to her examples. But it might be more accurate than she realizes. The reader reading as a speaker, or Storyteller, is indeed an actor, realizing each episode through his or her own body and the space around it. The ‘alien’ quality of Defoe’s spatial descriptions for present-day readers can be accounted for by our own assumption that the reader reads as a hearer, listening to a narrator set forth events from a fixed, though notional, location in time and space.

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Appendix

Sources for Tables 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 Diary, 21 September to 27 November 1696; MS RLC NKS 2935, pp. 172– 84. Diary, 15 September to 3 November 1701; YAS MS 23, pp. 1–16. Autobiography, YAS MS 26, pp. 124-5, 132, 134, 140, 146, 156, 168, 171, 176, 184, 186, 196, 205–6.

Sources for Tables 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6 Diary (1681): YAS MS 21, pp. 168–233 (29 November 1680 to 25 April 1681). Diary (1691): YAS MS 22, pp. 111–31 (1 April 1691 to 16 August 1691). Diary (1701): YAS MS 23, pp. 1–40 (15 September 1701 to 11 January 1702). Diary (1703): YAS MS 23, pp. 214–49 (25 April 1703). Letters to John Sharp: GRO Box 77a, bundle F; Box 84, bundle 2. Dated 21 June 1695; 12 August 1698; 7 January 1699; 13 February 1699; 25 April 1699; 20 May 1699; 10 June 1699; 8 January 1700; 12 August 1702; 22 August 1702; 29 April 1704. Letters to Hans Sloane: BL MS Sloane 4025. Dated 23 November 1702; 19 May 1703; 22 January 1704; 15 March 1704; 7 June 1704; 16 September 1704; 1 June 1706; 10 June 1707; 31 May 1710; 26 November 1711. Letters to Thomas Hearne: Bod MS Rawlinson English Miscellany. Dated 21 August 1697; 23 November 1697; 15 February 1702; 11 June 1702; 25 November 1703; 17 January 1705; 25 March 1706; 17 February 1707; 7 March 1707; 8 October 1707; 23 January 1708; 25 February 1708; 16 October 1708; 19 January 1709; 16 April 1709; 20 May 1709; 28 December 1709; 6 February 1710; 19 August 1710; 21 October 1710;

196 Appendix

22 November 1710; 21 February 1711; 26 March 1711; 4 April 1711; 16 May 1711; 13 March 1712; 16 April 1712; 24 May 1712; 3 July 1712; 17 January 1719; 2 June 1719. Ducatus: pp. 601–28. Addison: The Spectator, ed. Bond, 1965, vol. 1, pp. 1–6, 14–17, 22–7, 31–47, 52–9, 66–73, 78–82. Only passages by Addison are included; quotations, passages in other languages, and the letter printed on pp. 73–4 have been excluded.

Sources for Table 3.7 Ducatus: pp. 601–28. Addison: The Spectator, ed. Bond, 1965, vol. 1, pp. 1–6, 14–17, 22–7, 31–47, 52–9, 66–73, 78–82. Only passages by Addison are included; quotations, passages in other languages, and the letter printed on pp. 73–4 have been excluded.

Bibliography

Manuscripts Note on Transcriptions Long /s/ has not been reproduced, /v/ and /j/ have been transcribed as /u/ and /i/ in vowel positions. Abbreviations such as ‘ye’ have not been expanded. Where MSS have numbered pages, I have used those instead of folio numbers. Abbreviations in References BL Bod Bro L EU GRO NLS RLC UG YAS YML

British Library Bodleian Library Brotherton Library, University of Leeds University of Edinburgh Gloucestershire Record Office National Library of Scotland Royal Library, Copenhagen University of Glasgow Yorkshire Archaeological Society York Minster Library

BL MS Sloane 4025 BL MS Sloane 4039 Bod MS Add.A.49 Bod MS Ashmole 784

Thoresby’s letters to Hans Sloane Marriott’s diary Ashmole’s diary

198 Bibliography Bod MS Ashmole 826 Bod MS Ashmole 1136 Bod MS Don.d.112 Bod MS Rawlinson C.799 Bod MS Rawlinson C.861 Bod MS Rawlinson D.76 Bod MS Rawlinson D.84 Bod MS Rawlinson D.120 Bod MS Rawlinson D.428 Bod MS Rawlinson D.1334 Bod MS Rawlinson D.1338 Bod MS Rawlinson Q.e.27 Bod MS Smith 141 Bod MS Wood’s Diaries 1–39 Bro L MS 8 Bro L MS 10 EU MS Dc.1.82 EU MS Dc.7.81 EU MS Laing Coll. 262 EU MS Laing Coll. 271 GRO MS D3549 6/1/T13 GRO MS D3549 6/5/5 GU MS Gen. 778 NLS MS 34.6.22 NLS MS 3150 NLS MS Wodrow 34.5.19 NLS MS Wodrow 34.6.22 RLC MS NKS 2935 YAS MS 11 YAS MS 14 YAS MS 17 YAS MS 21 YAS MS 22 YAS MS 23 YAS MS 24 YAS MS 25 YAS MS 26 YML MS 21

Ashmole’s diary Ashmole’s diary Addison’s essays Robert Bargrave’s diary Anonymous diary Moody’s travel diary Anonymous travel diary Leake’s travel diary Woodman’s diary Quaker diary Anonymous pious diary Diary of Oxford fellow Anthony Wood’s diary Bufton’s diaries George Drummond’s fair copy of anonymous diary Nasmyth’s diary Reverend Francis Barland’s diary Gordon’s diary Thoresby’s letters to John Sharp Pious autobiography

Thoresby’s diary Thoresby’s notebooks Thoresby’s notebooks Thoresby’s notebooks Thoresby’s diary Thoresby’s diary Thoresby’s diary Thoresby’s diary Thoresby’s diary Thoresby’s autobiography Thoresby’s diary

Bibliography 199 Internet Sources www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/club/darkadaptedeye/transcript2.shtml Transcript of interview with Barbara Vine on BBC Radio 4, broadcast on 6 October 2002. No longer available online. www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/club/londonfields/transcript.shtml Transcript of interview with Martin Amis on BBC Radio 4, broadcast on 5 August 2001. No longer available online. Printed Texts Abbreviations OCCL OCEL

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Index

Abbott, H. Porter, 169, 170 abridgements, 183–8 actors, 168–9, 174 Adamson, Sylvia, 13–15, 190–1 Addison, Joseph: editorial methods of, 55–9; punctuation in texts by, 55–9, 80–1; The Spectator, 17; syntactic organization in texts by, 77, 80–1, 93, 94, 95–7, 99–101, 105–8, 109; The Tatler, 41–2 Advice of a Father (1688), 30–1, 34 Advice to an Only Child (1693), 34–5 Aesop, 39 Aiken, Joseph, 50 ambiguity, 46, 48, 58–9, 78–9, 149–50 Ambrose, Isaac, 142, 143, 148–9 Ambrose, St, 5 Amis, Martin, 10 anaphoric expressions, 191–2. See also connective strategies; pronouns anchors, 170, 181–2, 189, 191 Andersen, Jennifer, 21 Angier, John, 146, 147 antiquarian inquiries, note-taking style of, 71–3 antiquity, silent reading in, 4–5

Archbishop of York. See Sharp, John, archbishop of York Ashmole, Elias, 154–5 assumed hearer, 15–16, 161–4 astronomical diaries, 154. See also diaries Atkinson, Max, 82–3 audience, 115–16, 117, 122–7, 130–1 Augustine, St, 5 author, implied. See implied writer autobiographies. See biographies; Thoresby, Ralph, autobiography Bakhtin, M.M., 9 Bargrave, Robert, 155–6 Barton, David, 117 Baxter, Richard, 26–7, 27–8, 38, 40–1 Beadle, John, 142–3 Behn, Aphra, 176–7 Biber, Douglas, 12, 13 Bible: memorization of, 31, 148; punctuation and, 51–2; study of, 27, 141 Bickerstaffe, Isaac (pseud.), 41–2 biographies, 137–8, 144–5, 177–9. See also pious diaries; Thoresby, Ralph, autobiography

214 Index Biography of the English Language, 12 Black, John B., 170–1 Bloomfield, Leonard, 80 Bond, Donald, 41–2 book ownership, 22, 23–4, 24–9 books, pirated, 183–8 Booth, Wayne C., 9 brain, physiological effect of reading on, 35 Brazil, David, 47 breathlessness, 77–8 Brewer, John, 21, 25, 111–12, 112–13, 115 Brown, Penelope, 110 Brown, Thomas, 178–9 Browne, Thomas, Sir, 143 Bunyan, John, 27, 28, 31, 39 Calamy, Edward, 137 capitalization, 64–7 case studies, 17–18 Castle, Terry, 4, 167 Chang, Jung, 9–10 chanting of psalms, 51 chapbooks, 26, 32, 40–1, 183 Charlton, Kenneth, 30, 33 Chartier, Roger, 4 children: comprehension skills of, 172, 181, 182–3, 191–2; and engaged reading, 21–3, 26–9, 32–3, 39–42; and reading for pleasure, 35–6 children’s literature, 39–41 clause boundaries: and pausing, 79, 80–2; punctuation of, 55–9, 68. See also relative clauses; syntactic relationships Clegg, James, 139, 157, 160 Clement, Francis, 49 close reading, 12 Closet Prayer (1671), 145–6

closing salutations in letters, 118–20 Cocker, Edward, 50 codes of conduct. See politeness colons, 45, 50, 51; Addison’s use of, 55, 57 commas, 46, 48–9, 49–50, 51–2; Addison’s use of, 55–9; Sloane’s use of, 67–8; Thoresby’s use of, 69, 70, 74 commonplacing, 30. See also memorization completion points, 83 compliments, 120–2, 127, 164 comprehension, 170–2, 190–1, 191–2 confidentiality, 61, 122–7, 133, 159 conjunctions, 14, 50, 56 connective strategies, 13–15, 76, 79, 84–6, 190–2; relative clauses, 86–109 consumerism, 22, 23–9 context, mental models of, 171–2 conversation: and engaged reading, 28; and letters, 15–16, 19, 111, 115– 17, 118–29; and politeness, 112–13, 114–15; syntactic structures employed in, 84–5 coordination, 104 corpus analysis, 12 corrections, 52–75; by Addison, 55–9; by editors and printers, 52–4, 59, 60–2, 63–9; by Thoresby, 63–9 Cowper, Mary, Lady, 163–4 Creswick, James, 34–5 Croll, Morris W., 12 Crystal, David, 45, 53, 80, 81, 84–5 Daines, Simon, 49, 50 dates of events, 132, 156 de la Pryme, Abraham, 132, 133, 156 de Vries, Jan, 24 Defoe, Daniel, 44, 78, 175–6, 179–80, 180–1, 184, 192–3 deictics, 191

Index 215 Delavel, Elizabeth, 33 detachment, 112–13, 116 diaries: astronomical, 154; and attitudes to recreation, 34; audience of, 130–1, 161–4; and confidentiality, 133, 159; content of, 143–5, 154–6; in early modern period, 131–2; functionalist, 130–1, 132, 138–9, 152–6; as genre, 132–45; pious, 132, 133–6, 137–8, 139–45, 148–54; recreational, 19, 130, 131, 157–63; structuring of entries in, 139, 141, 144, 149–52, 154–5. See also Hamilton, David, Sir; Ryder, Dudley; Thoresby, Ralph Digby, Lettice, Lady, 25 discourse structures: conversation as model for, 114–15, 116; deictics in, 14–15; and pauses, 47–8; and silent reading, 3, 47–8 Don Bellianis of Greece, 41–2 dots (punctuation marks), 45 dramatization, 180–1. See also reading, as performance; storytelling Drummond, George, 136 Ducatis Leodiensis (1715), 60, 66–7, 99–105, 136–7 Earle, Rebecca, 115 editing, 59, 60–2, 63–9, 78–9; and punctuation, 44 education: and engaged reading, 28–9, 35–6; language teaching in, 32–3; memorization in, 29–33 elite, the, 21–2, 24–5, 26 ellipsis, 71–3, 84–5, 107, 108 Emmott, Catherine, 171–2, 174, 176, 182–3, 190–1 emotions: and diary entries, 151–2, 159; in discourse, 83, 112–13, 115–16, 127–8; in storytelling, 173–4, 180–1

engaged reading, 22–3, 25, 28–9, 32–3, 39–42; and conversation, 28 English Orthographie (1668), 37 equality, 114, 115, 116, 119–20, 121 Essay on Elocution and Punctuation, An (1748), 50 Evans, Arise, 37 Evelyn, John, 145, 156 events, dates of, 132, 156 Experience, 10 experiences (evidences of God’s grace), 135–6, 143–4. See also pious diaries Experiencia (1925), 144 expository texts, 188–90 extensive reading, 21 Fairfax, Thomas, Lord, 30, 33–4, 38 Family Altar, A (1693), 144, 146 Female Quixote, The (1752), 187, 188 fiction. See novels Finegan, Edward, 12, 13 Fitzmaurice, Susan, 89, 90, 93, 96, 97– 8, 105, 106 focalization, 171–2, 172–4, 175–9, 179–80, 184, 187–8, 190–1, 193; definition, 170. See also reference points Fodor, Janet Dean, 8, 45–6 foregrounding, 106, 108 Foreman, Simon, 154 Fox, Adam, 6, 21, 168 Fox-Bourne, H.R., 30 Friedman, Jerome, 26 full stops, 50, 51; in note-taking style, 71–3; Thoresby’s use of, 69–72, 74, 75, 102–3 functionalist diaries, 130–1, 132, 138– 9, 152–6 Furbank, P.N., 44 Gay, John, 118–19

216 Index Genette, Gérard, 9 gentility, 15, 62–3, 113–14 Gentlewomans Companion, The (1675), 28, 35–6, 38, 189–90 gestures, use of in storytelling, 172–4, 175–6, 177 Gillespie, Raymond, 31 girls’ reading, 28, 35–6, 38 ‘godly’ people: attitudes to reading of, 21–2, 26, 27, 33–6; ‘duties’ of, 141–3; and memorization, 31, 32. See also pious diaries Gordon, Ian, 12 Gordon, William, 144 ‘Greatrix the stroker’, 77–9 greetings, 118–20 grief, expressions of, 151–2 group conversation, 84–5 guides to punctuation, 49–54 Gulliver’s Travels, 176, 184–5

Hope, Jonathan, 89, 90 Hornsbuch, Hieronymus, 53 Howell, James, 146 Hunter, J. Paul, 167–8, 192

Hall, Nigel, 117 Hamilton, Anne, Lady, 25 Hamilton, David, Sir, 157–8, 159, 163 Harris, Benjamin, 39 Harris, Paul L., 171, 181 Haynes, Joseph, 178–9 Haywood, Eliza, 187–8 hearer, assumed. See assumed hearer heteroglossia, 9 Heywood, Oliver, 31, 139, 141, 144, 145–6, 147–8 Hickman, Maya E., 191–2 higher education, 30, 32–3 highlighting information, 106, 108 Hill, R.L., 44, 46 Hoby, Margaret, Lady, 134 Hodges, Richard, 49 Holmes, V., 80 Holy Living, 146

Japanese, interpretation of silence in, 47 ‘J.G.’, 40 Johns, Adrian, 35 Johnson, Samuel, 115, 117 Jones, R.F., 11, 12 Josselin, Ralph, 134, 149, 149–50 Journal of the Plague Year, A, 179–80 Journal or Diary of a Thankful Christian, The (1656), 142–3

identity. See self, conception of the ‘idle’ reading. See reading, for pleasure Implicit Prosody Hypothesis (IPH), 46 implied writer, 9, 10–11, 15–16 improvisation, 147–8 indeterminate connectivity, 84 indeterminate ellipsis, 84–5 intensive reading, 21 intercalation of structures, 85 intimacy, creation of, 118–20, 120–2 inventories, 24 Inward Testimony of the Spirit of Christ, The (1701), 157 italic type, 64, 67

Keach, Benjamin, 39 King, William, 77–9 Kirkman, Francis, 26, 28 Kirsch, Irwin, 22, 24 Klein, Lawrence, 15, 112, 114–15 Labov, William, 87 language change, 88, 114–15

Index 217 Larpent, Anna, 25 Latin, influence of on prose style, 11 Lennox, Charlotte, 187, 188 L’Estrange, Roger, 39 letters: audience of, 115–16, 117, 122–7; compliments in, 120–2, 127; and confidentiality, 61, 122–7; as genre, 115–17; and intimacy, 118– 20, 120–2; note-taking style in, 71– 3; opening and closing greetings in, 118–20; and polite conversation, 15–16, 19, 111, 115–17, 118– 29; textual analysis of, 117. See also Thoresby, Ralph Levinson, Stephen C., 110 Life and Death of Mrs. Margaret Andrews, The (1680), 177–8, 180 Life of Pamela, The (1741), 185–6 lines, 69, 74–5 linguistic guidebooks, 49–52 linguistic theory, 46, 110–11 linguistic variables, 87–90 literacy, spread of, 7–8, 12, 167–8, 192; measurement of, 23 literary language, 13–15, 168; definition, 6 Locke, John, 15, 28–9, 32–3, 40, 131 London, rise of consumerism in, 24–5 Lundberg, Ingvar, 22 Lye, Thomas, 50 main clauses. See clause boundaries Manguel, Alberto, 4 Ma(r)king the Text, 44–5 Marriott, Timothy, 140, 141 Mason, John, 50 Mather, Cotton, 133–4 Matthews, Toby, archbishop, 134 Maxwell of Pollock, George, Sir, 142, 146

McIntosh, Carey, 12, 13, 115, 117 McKendrick, Neil, 24 McKenzie, D.F., 53–4 Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing (1683), 52–3 Media: or, The Middle Things (1657), 142, 143, 148–9 medieval pointing, 45. See also punctuation Meek, Margaret, 22–3 memoir, 145 memorization, 29–33, 148 mental models, 171–2, 182–3, 190, 191 methodology, 69, 87–90, 99–101, 117 Middle Ages, silent reading in, 4–5 Miege, Guy, 49 Miller, Perry, 12 Millward, Celia, 12 Milton, John, 45 monks, reading practices of, 4–5 monologues, 180–1 Moody, Robert, 155 morality and politeness, 112–13 Morris, Castilion, 134 Most Plain Directions for True-Writing (1653), 49 Movement of English Prose, The, 12 Moxon, Joseph, 52–3 Murray, W.S., 44, 46 narrative theory, 8–9 narrators, 9–10, 168–72, 181–90; definition, 168, 169 Nasmyth, James, 144–5 negation, 81 Nevalainen, Terttu, 117, 118 New Literary History, 9 Newcome, Henry, 139 Nicolson, William, 156, 161, 162 non-fiction texts, 188–90

218 Index note-taking style, 71–3, 122–3 notional location, 181–2, 186. See also narrators; reference points nouns, capitalization of, 64–7 novels, 4, 167–8, 192–3; moral influence of, 33, 35–6. See also prose style Oakhill, Jane, 183, 191 observations, 152–6 Ong, Walter, 6, 37 opening salutations in letters, 118–20 opinions and politeness, 112–13 oral texts, 13, 168; and constraints on pauses, 47–8, 76, 174; definition, 6 Orality and Literacy, 6 oratory, 76, 82–4, 115–16 orientation points, 3, 6, 11 Oroonoko, 176–7 Orthotypographia (1608), 53 Owens, W.R., 44 Oxford University Press, 53 Özyürek, A., 172–3 Painter, William, 33 Pamela, 185–6 parallelism, 106–8 Parkes, Malcolm, 44, 45, 50 Partridge, A.C., 45, 50–1 patronage, 127–9 pauses: in chanting, 51; and completion points, 83; definition, 47; interpretation of, 47–8, 174; marking length of, 45, 46, 48–9, 50–2; in note-taking style, 71–3; and punctuation, 43, 45–6, 50–2, 68–9, 69– 75, 78–9; and syntactic relationships, 18, 67–8, 79, 80–2; and topic boundaries, 175 Pepys, Samuel, 24–5, 138–9 Perera, Katharine, 192

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 60–2, 64, 65–6, 117, 153; satires on, 77–9 pious diaries, 132, 133–6, 137–8, 139– 45, 148–54 pirate publications, 183–8 Play-book for children to allure them to read as soon as possible, A (1694), 40 pleasure, reading for, 33–6 pointing, medieval (punctuation), 45 points of view, 169–70, 172–4, 175–9, 181–2, 187–8. See also reference points politeness, 15–16, 111–15; definition, 110; and intimacy, 118–20; in letters, 15–16, 19, 111, 115–17, 118– 29; seeking patronage, and culture of, 127–9. See also conversation politics and events, diaries as records of, 132, 156 Pollatsek, Alexander, 8 poor, the, opportunities for reading of, 26–8, 32, 39, 40 prayer, 145–50, 151–2; as duty, 141, 142; as performance, 83, 146–8 preaching, 11–12, 37–8 Presbyterians: attitudes to prayer of, 146–8; attitudes to reading of, 21– 2, 26, 27; diaries of, 157–63; and memorization, 31 Price, Owen, 38 printing house corrections, 52–9, 64–7; and punctuation, 63, 67–75 Private Christian’s Witness, The (1697), 157–8 pronouns, 14, 190 proof-reading. See printing house corrections Proof-reading in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, 53, 54

Index 219 prose style: case studies of, 17–18, 97– 8 (see also Addison, Joseph; Thoresby, Ralph); corpus analysis, 12; development of ‘plain style’, 4, 11–16, 17, 183; of expository texts, 188–90; note-taking style, 71–3, 122–3; and silent reading, 7–8, 190–2. See also novels prosody and punctuation, 45–6 Protestant Tutor, The, 39 psalms, chanting of, 51 ‘punctual self’, the, 16 punctuation, 18; and ambiguity, 46, 48, 58–9, 78–9; in Bible, 51–2; definition, 44–5; guidebooks on, 49– 54; hierarchy of marks in, 46, 50–2; historical studies of, 44–9; in notetaking style, 71–3; and pauses, 78– 9; and pausing, 43, 45–6, 68–9, 69– 75; and printing house corrections, 52–9, 67–75; and syntactic relationships, 45–6, 55–9; and topic boundaries, 73–5, 175 Puritanism, influence of on prose style, 11–12 Puttenham, George, 49 Quakers, 135–6 Quirk, Randolph, 49 Rall, Jaime, 171, 181 rank, effect of on social interaction, 113–14, 118–20. See also gentility Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, 117, 118 Raven, James, 4, 23 Rayner, Keith, 8 reading: aloud, 8, 11, 36–9, 168–9, 172–4; attitudes to, 21–2, 26, 27, 33–6; changes in norms of, 3–4,

5–6, 21, 37–9; in early modern period, 21, 23, 26–9, 33–6, 36–9; as hearing, 8–10, 181–3; intensive vs extensive, 21; methods used in teaching, 28–9, 35–6, 37–8; in Middle Ages, 4–5; models of, 6–11; and orientation points, 3, 6, 11; as performance, 8, 11, 37–8, 76, 82–4, 168–9, 172–4, 189–90, 192–3 (see also storytellers); physiological effects of, 35; pictorial representation of, 23; for pleasure, 33–6, 40– 2; skills required in, 8–9. See also assumed hearer; engaged reading; implied writer; memorization; silent reading Reconsidering the Rise of the Novel, 167–8 recreation, attitudes to, 33–6. See also reading, for pleasure recreational diaries, 19, 130, 131 reference points, 3, 11, 169–70, 172– 4, 181–3, 185–6; spatial, 14–15, 175–9, 192–3; temporal, 179–80. See also focalization relative clauses, 86–109; Addison’s use of, 93, 94, 95–7, 99–101, 105–8, 109; definition, 86–7; distribution of, 98–109; and foregrounding, 106, 108; markers of, 88–90, 95–7; restrictive and non-restrictive, 89, 93–5, 103, 106–8; and textual analysis, 87–90, 99–101; Thoresby’s use of, 91–5, 97–105, 108–9. See also subordinate clauses religious experiences, diaries as records of, 135–6, 143–4. See also pious diaries Rethinking Reading Comprehension, 168 reviews, 9–10 Reynard the Fox, 40

220 Index rhetoric, 37, 45, 173–4 Rhetoric of Fiction, 9 Rich, Mary, 33 rich, the, 21–2, 24–5, 26 Richardson, Samuel, 185–6 Rivers, Isabel, 4 Roach, Joseph R., 174 Robinson Crusoe, 175–6, 180–1, 184 Rogers, Pat, 183 Romaine, Suzanne, 89 romances. See novels rote learning. See memorization Rousseau, G.S., 40 Royal Society: editorial practice of, 60–2; influence of on prose style, 11, 15, 153; satires on, 77–9; Thoresby’s letters to, 59–64, 66, 67–9, 117 Rupp, Gordon, 157 Ryder, Dudley, 159–60, 160–1, 162 Saenger, Paul, 4–5 Sauer, Elizabeth, 21 School of Piety, The, 31 science: children’s literature on, 40; dissemination of information on matters of, 71–3, 114, 122–3; influence of on prose style, 11, 15, 153 scope, 81 second language acquisition, 32–3 self, conception of the, 16, 112–13, 116, 131–2 semicolons, 50, 51; Addison’s use of, 55, 57–8; Sloane’s use of, 67, 68; Thoresby’s use of, 73, 75, 102 sentences, 76–7, 80–2; definition, 80, 81 sermons, memorization of, 31, 83 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 97–8, 110, 115 Shapin, Steven, 15

shared space in storytelling, 173–4 Sharp, John, archbishop of York, 60, 66, 67, 70–3, 74, 117, 118–29, 162, 163 Shepherd, Thomas, 143 silences, meaning of, 47–8. See also pauses silent reading: in antiquity, 4–5; critical mass accomplished in, 7–8, 191, 192; development of competence in, 22–3, 25, 28–9, 32–3, 39–42, 168, 191–2; and discourse structures, 3; in Middle Ages, 4–5; and pauses, 47; and prose style, 7–8, 190–2; and reference points, 3, 6, 11, 14–15, 169–70, 181–3; skills required for, 170–2, 181–3; and syntactic processing, 46. See also assumed hearer; implied writer Simpson, Percy, 53, 54 Sloane, Hans, 59–60, 60–2, 67–8, 117 Smith, Thomas, 156 Snow, Catherine E., 168 social mobility, 113–15 sociolinguistic theory, 110–11 sociolinguistic variables, 87–90 Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), 28–9 Sources of the Self, 16 spatial reference points, 3, 11, 14–15, 169, 172–4, 175–9, 185, 186, 188, 192–3 Spectator, The, 17, 55, 115, 158–9 spelling, 37 spiritual biographies, 31 spoken ‘texts’, 6–7 Spufford, Margaret, 26, 30, 37 Stern, Tiffany, 174 storytellers, 168–70, 172–81, 192–3; definition, 169

Index 221 storytelling, 34 style. See prose style subjects, organization of. See topic boundaries subordinate clauses, 57, 58, 103–4. See also relative clauses Sweet, Anne Polselli, 168 Swift, Jonathan, 13, 97–8, 176, 184–5 syntactic relationships: and intercalation of structures, 85; and pauses, 18, 67–8, 79, 80–2; and punctuation, 45–6, 55–9. See also relative clauses syntactic structures in conversation, 84–5 Tatler, The, 41–2 Taylor, Charles, 16, 131 Taylor, Jeremy, 141, 146, 149, 150 teaching: of memorization, 29–33; of reading, 28–9, 35–6, 37–8; of rhetoric, 37; of second languages, 32–3; of spelling, 37 temporal reference points, 3, 11, 169, 172–4, 179–80, 185, 186, 187–8 texts: connective strategies in, 13–15, 76, 79, 189, 190–2; constraints on pauses in, 47–8, 76, 174; definitions of types of, 6–7; voice in, 9–10 textual analysis, 69, 87–90, 99–101, 117 TH markers, 89, 90, 95–7 Thoresby, Ralph, 17–18; attitude of to reading, 33–6; autobiography of, 65, 70, 126; corrections in texts by, 63–9; diaries of, 64–5, 70, 73–5, 126, 132–3, 139, 141, 143, 150–2, 161, 162–3; diary collection of, 136–7; Ducatis Leodiensis (1715), 60, 66–7, 99–105, 136–7; genres of texts by,

92, 93, 95; letters of to John Sharp, 60, 66, 67, 70–3, 74, 117, 118–29; letters of to Royal Society, 59–64, 66, 67–9, 77–9; and memorization of sermons, 31; and prayer, 143, 149, 151–2; punctuation in texts by, 48–9, 63, 67–75, 80, 102; and social mobility, 59–60, 62–3, 113–14, 119– 20; spelling in texts by, 64, 65; spiritual anxieties of, 124–7; syntactic organization in texts by, 81–2, 83–4, 86, 91–5, 97–105, 108–9; textual analysis of texts by, 69, 117; underscoring in texts by, 67 Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid, 117, 118–19 tolerance, 112–13 Tom Thumb (1670), 40 Tomalin, Claire, 24–5 tone units, 47 topic boundaries, 73–5, 76, 82–4, 101–5, 108–9, 175 Transactioneer, The, 77–9 travel diaries, 154, 155–6. See also diaries Treatise of Stops, Points, or Pauses, A (1680), 50 Treip, Mindele, 45 True-born Englishman and Other Writings, 44 underscoring, 67 urban elite, the, 21–2, 24–5, 26 variationist method, 87–90 Veitch, Mrs, 146 viewpoints, 169–70, 172–4, 175–9, 181–2, 187–8. See also reference points Vine, Barbara, 10

222 Index visions, 135–6. See also pious diaries Vocal Organ, The (1665), 37 voice in texts, 9–10 Walker, Obadiah, 15 Wall, Cynthia, 192–3 War with the Devil, 39 Watt, Tessa, 26 Weatherill, Lorna, 24 Webster, Tom, 133 WH markers, 89, 90, 95–7 Wild Swans, 9–10 Winthrop, John, 144

women: diaries of, 134, 135–6, 137, 141, 148; reading aloud by, 38. See also girls’ reading Wood, Anthony, 40, 155 Woodforde, Mary, 148 Woolley, Hannah, 28, 32, 35–6, 38, 189–90 writer, implied. See implied writer written texts, 6–7 York, archbishop of. See Sharp, John, archbishop of York Yuill, Nicola, 183, 191

STUDIES IN BOOK and PRINT CULTURE General Editor: Leslie Howsam Hazel Bell, Indexes and Indexing in Fact and Fiction Heather Murray, Come, bright Improvement! The Literary Societies of Nineteenth-Century Ontario Joseph A. Dane, The Myth of Print Culture: Essays on Evidence, Textuality, and Bibliographical Method Christopher J. Knight, Uncommon Readers: Denis Donoghue, Frank Kermode, George Steiner, and the Tradition of the Common Reader Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, No Trespassing: Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Boundaries of Globalization William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus Siân Echard and Stephen Partridge, eds, The Book Unbound: Editing and Reading Medieval Manuscripts and Texts Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity Peter Stoicheff and Andrew Taylor, eds, The Future of the Page Jennifer Phegley and Janet Badia, eds, Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present Elizabeth Sauer, ‘Paper-contestations’ and Textual Communities in England, 1640–1675 Nick Mount, When Canadian Literature Moved to New York Jonathan Carlyon, Andrés González de Barcia and the Creation of the Colonial Spanish American Library Leslie Howsam, Old Books and New Histories: An Orientation to Studies in Book and Print Culture Deborah McGrady, Controlling Readers: Guillaume de Machaut and His Late Medieval Audience David Finkelstein, ed., Print Culture and the Blackwood Tradition Bart Beaty, Unpopular Culture: Transforming the European Comic Book in the 1990s Elizabeth Driver, Culinary Landmarks: A Bibliography of Canadian Cookbooks, 1825–1949 Benjamin C. Withers, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Ms. Claudius B.iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England Mary Ann Gillies, The Professional Literary Agent in Britain, 1880–1920 Willa Z. Silverman, The New Bibliopolis: French Book-Collectors and the Culture of Print, 1880–1914

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