Note 68 — Chapter IV · THE ART OF WRITING
Reading edition
Ferris Greenslet (in his study of Joseph Glanvill, p. 183), referring to the Cartesian influence on English prose style, quotes from Sprat’s History of the Royal Society that the Society “exacted from its members a close, naked, natural way of speaking, positive expressions, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the mathematic plainness as they can.” The Society passed a resolution to reject “all amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style.”