Write a short note on Lamb's Prose style.

Write a short note on Lamb’s Prose style.

“Lamb had not one style but many.” Discuss.

“The blossoms are culled from other men’s gardens, but their blending is all Lamb’s own.” Discuss.

Write a note on the salient features of Lamb’s prose style.

Ans.

Influence of Prose Masters of 17th Century: Lamb’s exquisite but mannered English was based upon the prose masters of the seventeenth century (Browne, Burton, Fuller). To them he was drawn by a natural kinship. Their thoughts were largely his. Their qualities and conceits suited his particular humour, and his critical taste was pleased with their antique flavour. Lamb knew these authors’ works so thoroughly that their thoughts and expressions came naturally to him. His manner of thinking itself is akin to theirs. Thus, when he is in a reflective mood, as in New Year’s Eve, his style resembles that of Sir Thomas Browne; when he is being witty, as in Poor Relations, he adopts a style recalling that of Fuller; and when fantastic, as in A Chapter On Ears, he writes like Burton. The saying that the style is the man is truer of Lamb than of anyone else.

Great Impact of Wide Knowledge of Elizabethans: We find, in Lamb essays. certain features which are apparently the result of his wide and deep knowledge of the Elizabethan writers. Among the features of his style of writing, we may note his love of word coining, his fondness for alliteration, his use of compound words, his formation of adjectives from proper names, his frequent use of Latinisms. His love of punning and giving absurd details and startling metaphors, and his mystification, are also reflective of the Elizabethan Age. There is also in his work plenty of archaic words such as. peradventure, forsooth, verily.

Variation in Style: At times Lamb varies the style within the same essay. There is harmony between matter and manner, mood and expression. The essay, New Year’s Eve, begins in a pensive and reflective note, and the style suitably echoes the brooding music of Browne. If Lamb is in a witty and playful mood, he can be like Fuller. He can ever be grave and didactic like Bacon. When his imagination lifted him above the thoughts of style, he could soar to the heights of Milton and Jeremy Taylor. When he wrote on ‘homely themes, he wrote like a man of his own century. In this way, there are a number of styles that he adopts in his different essays.

Employment of Iteration: Iteration is one of the ingredients of Lamb’s style. In The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers, chimney-sweepers are described as ‘innocent blackness’. ‘young Africans of our own growth’, ‘almost clergy imps’. In The South-Sea, addressing the old building (South-Sea House), Lamb says: “There is a charm in thy quiet-a cessation-a coolness from business-an indolence almost cloistral-which is delightful.”

An Abundant Use of Similes and Metaphors: Metaphors and similes seem to flow from Lamb’s pen naturally and each is appropriate and striking for its novelty. Many times the comparisons involve allusions-literary, historical or Biblical. The clerks of South-Sea House are aptly called odd fishes, and that they formed a ‘sort of Noah’s ark’. They were a ‘lay monastery’. In Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago, the offender, about to be whipped before being expelled from school, is described to look “as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had seized upon him.”

The Use of High-Sounding and Inflated Words: Lamb often uses high sounding and pedantic words and phrases. In The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, he makes use of inflated sounding words such as, ‘extreme tenuity of his frame’, ‘the aspirate so dominated”, “reductive of juvenescent emotion’ and ‘recondite machinery”. Grace Before Meat contains the terms: ‘ravenous orgasm’, ‘snug congregation of Utopian Rabelaisian Christians’, and ‘ceremony of manduction’. In The South Sea House, we have ‘tristful visage’ and ‘a superfetation of dirt. A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig makes use of words such as ‘itinerating and dulcifying a substance’ and ‘adhesive oleaginous. Lamb had an intuitive sense of humour which made him use such quaint, pedantic words in a novel manner.

Greatly Skilled and Master of Short Aphoristic Sentences: Lamb is equally capable of expressing thoughts in a short and pithy manner, striking for its loaded brevity. In a number of essays, he expresses his thoughts in short sentences, reminiscent of Bacon. In writing such sentences. Lamb shows himself capable of exercising a ‘classical” restraint. From All Fool’s Day:

“The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more test he giveth you, that he will not betray or over-reach you.”

From Grace Before Meat: “Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanks-giving.”

From A Bachelor’s Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People: “Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort.”

Poetic Style: Lamb was a Romantic and this is mainly manifested in his nostalgia, and delicate feeling for the loss of the past and in the glorification of childhood and its innocence. Whenever he writes about the vanished and vanishing glories of the past, his style becomes infused with poetry. As for Dream Children, it is sheer poetry by virtue of its fanciful quality, its deep emotion, its melancholy atmosphere, and its exceptionally simple and almost lyrical style. The concluding passage of this essay, in which the imaginary children seem to be speaking to Lamb, has the very essence of poetry in it:

“We are not of Alice nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartram father. We are nothing, less than nothing and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name.”

Conversational Style: Lamb can also write in a conversational, almost colloquial, style when the occasion demands it. In The South Sea House, Lamb begins with a direct address to the reader. At the end of the same essay, he indulges in a mischievous attempt to mystify the reader by suggesting that what he has been saying all the time may not be truth. A colloquial style is adopted throughout the essay, All Fools’ Day. A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig ends a conversational address to an imaginary cook: “But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe.” In The Praise of Chimney Sweepers. Lamb addresses the reader directly: “Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry.. give him a penny,”

Antithetical Style: Sometimes Lamb resorts to an antithetical style of writing. The use of this kind of style is conspicuous in Poor Relations and My Relations. In Poor Relations, the behaviour of a poor relative is described in antithetical sentences. In My Relations the character of John Lamb is drawn in the same style: “He has some speculative notions against laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural to him-when peradventure the next moment his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer.”

A Highly Allusive Style: The abundance of references and allusions in his essays overwhelming. These allusions certainly enrich the essay. Lamb’s essays contain is historical, biblical, geographical and literary allusions, with the last named category preponderating. In Oxford in the Vacation, there are references to Bartlemy, Saint Jude and Saint Simon. Queen Lar, Mount Tabor, Plato, and several others.

Free Use of Quotations: Lamb makes use of transformed quotations, condensed quotations, combined quotations, adapted quotations etc. He quotes from the Bible, from Milton, from Richard Burton, from Sir Thomas Browne, from Wordsworth, from Keats and from many other sources. Sometimes he takes liberty to change the original to suit his matter. At times he indulges in a parody of well-known lines in order to get a humorous effect. Alongwith these quotations we also find an abundant use of Latinisms.