You might be right. I find a lot of old vernacular pretty objectionable on stylistic grounds - if I was going to describe it, I'd call it 'semi-colon heavy'. Lots of big, chunky sentences with curlicues. It's a hard style to like. Then again, Moby Dick is written in that style, and it's amazing. I think it's like beef wellington or lobster thermidor. It's amazing if it's done really well, but a mediocre one is horrible.