When I read the journals of an 18th Century writer, I’m always struck by the careful but confident elegance of the way they express themselves. You can feel the spirit of the age in them – in the way that they make such an effort to be civilized, urbane and delicate – and yet keep slipping into roaring, lively vulgarity. They’re a noisy, self-confident people with lots of animal vitality who are trying to tame themselves for the sake of civilization. And if you can get all of that from the way they express themselves, then the writer can get all of that across to the reader simply by allowing the book to speak in the same way. (Or at least, as close as you can get without losing your modern reader altogether.)

This. I love the way that 18th and early 19th century people write. :D It sounds so elegant on the surface and yet there's stuff going on underneath that's as far from elegant as you'll get anywhere.