Today I read a letter written by Ben Franklin. It partially states:
“At present I shall only give you my opinion, that, though your reasonings are subtile and may prevail with some readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of mankind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece will be, a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face.”
My question is: to us, this and other speech like it comes across as sounding noble, very prim and proper—even lofty or pompous—or stilted. Everything is so correct and polite. Obviously people in his day wrote that way. Did they talk that way as well? Was this the language of the upper class and/or the lower class? Did poorer people speak something more akin to the English we have today? Did others view this style of speech as needlessly formal? Did the speakers themselves see their own language as a bit over the top? I just think it must have been exhausting trying to frame your words so delicately and correctly, in writing, let alone everyday speech. Was this style perceived as normal?
Where did it come from and when and why did it make way for the English we know and use today?
The formalization of grammar (and spelling) only happened later.
Plus, remember, that a written word was a major effort - that only some could write and only some could read. There seem to be a lot of subordinate clauses and phrases in that sentence to ensure the clarity of the message, and I’m betting a lot more thought went into the composition of the written work than in everyday speech.
Another point with run-on sentences. I have a book about the life and correspondence of Lord Lisle during the time of Henry VIII. It was mentioned that even more so, punctuation was optional and sporadic. Also, the more important types who wrote would write one massive blob of text without whitespace; no paragraph breaks - because someone intent on doing harm could insert additional words in the breaks to incriminate the author. Perhaps this sort of writing encouraged run-on sentences.
Franklin was a professional writer who edited his letters for publication. Formal writing was like formal speechmaking or sermonizing - the audience expected some high-falutin’ language to show the importance of the message otherwise they felt cheated.
Remember, even eighty years after Franklin, Abraham Lincoln was often disparaged as being a storyteller rather than an orator because he chose to use “common” language and images in his speeches.
High falutin’ language was aimed at the kind of people who expected it. Rather in the way that most of us are more careful about grammar and spelling here than we would be on, say, twitter.
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote for ‘ordinary’ people:
And eek with staves many another man;
Ran Colle our dogge, and Talbot, and Gerland,
And Malkin, with a distaf in hir hand;
Ran cow and calf, and eek the verray hogges
So were they fered for berking of the dogges
And shouting of the men and wimmen eke,
They ronne so, hem thoughte hir herte breke.
It’s formal because it’s based on the classical rhetorical style that people in that sort of position at that sort of time were trained to write, as the proper and polite way to address a serious subject. But note that the final sentence is common/ordinary/informal language - and, in the context, deliberately shocking, to underline his point. (I’m wondering if he isn’t, perhaps, slightly over-egging the formality to make a point about the way the recipient’s work has been written?)
I have a feeling the idea of writing like one talks being a virtue* is relatively recent, and I seem to recall reading that Franklin’s use of language was slightly archaic even for the time.