‘They have therefore been rigorous in putting in
ejecution, the only Remedy, that can be found for this
extavagance: and that has been, a constant Resolution,
to reject all the amplifications, digressions,
and swellings of style: to return back to
the primitive purity, and shortness,
when men deliver’d so many things almost
in an equal number of words.
They have exacted from all their members,
a close, naked, natural way of speaking;
a native easiness: bringing all things as near
the mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring
the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and
Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars.’
Bishop Thomas Sprat,
The History of the Royal-Society of London
(1667)
Image: Frontispiece to The History of the Royal-Society of London
by Thomas Sprat. National Portrait Gallery (London).
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