Along with this went the temporary disappearance of ornate prose. Prose of this style, though it had its beauties, was yet liable to be full of flaws, and was unacceptable to the taste of the age of Pope. It was therefore avoided. When ornate prose re-emerged later in the work of Johnson and Gibbon it was purged of its technical weaknesses, a development largely due to the period of maturing that it had undergone in the time we are now considering. While the school of Addison represents the middle style, the plainer style is represented in the work of Swift and Defoe. Swift reveals the style at its best--sure, clean, and strong. Defoe’s writing is even plainer, and often descends to carelessness and inaccuracy. This is due almost entirely to the haste with which he wrote. We give an example of this colloquial style: “Well,” said I, “honest man, that is a great mercy, as things go now with the poor. But how do you live then, and how are you kept from the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all?” “Why, sir,” says he, “I am a waterman, and there is my boat,” says he, “and the boat serves me for a house; I work in it in the day, and I sleep in it in the night, and what I get I lay it down upon that stone,” says he, showing me a broad stone on the other side of the street, a good way from his house; “and then,” says he, “I halloo and call to them till I make them hear, and they come and fetch it.” DEFOE, _A Journal of the Plague Year_ TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS