found; yet neither followeth it therefore, that all scholars live uncomfortable lives, because some do so, that are possessed and oppressed with that humour; nor may that rightly be ascribed to study and learning, which not it, but the constitution of some students, produceth.-Gataker's Joy of the Just.

With regard to the transposition of words and members out of what we are apt to call their natural order, critics have entered into much discussion. It is agreed on all hands, that such transposition or inversion bestows upon a period a very sensible degree of force and elevation; and yet writers seem to be at a loss in what manner to account for this effect. Whether, upon the whole, we have gained or lost by departing from this mode of arrangement, has by some been doubted. It is sufficiently evident, however, that the genius of the English language does not naturally admit of much inversion; and that such instances of transposition as occur in the passages lately quoted, are altogether obsolete: no modern writer could adopt them without rendering himself liable to the charge of harshness and affectation.

The

He

Among those who first laid aside the frequent inversions which prevailed among writers of the former age, we may reckon Cowley and Clarendon. writings of Temple also contributed much to advance the language to its present state; but to those of Dryden it is chiefly indebted for its smoothness and elegance. Dryden began to write about the time of the Restoration, and continued long in his literary career. brought to the study of his native tongue, a vigorous mind fraught with various knowledge. There is a richness in his diction, a copiousness, ease, and variety in his expression, which have rarely been surpassed by those who have succeeded him. His clauses are never balanced, nor his periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous: what is little, is gay; what is great, is splendid. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all seems careless, there is nothing harsh; and though

since the publication of his works more than a century has elapsed, yet they have nothing uncouth or obsolete.

Some are of opinion that it is elegance rather than strength, which forms the chief characteristic of modern English authors. They maintain that, since the close of the seventeenth century, few specimens have been exhibited of energetic composition, and that purity and elegance have been studied, to the neglect of strength and vigour. This charge seems to be unsupported by facts. Vigour is sometimes confounded with harshness; it is supposed that a writer cannot be energetic, without being rugged. "They would not have it run without rubs, as if that stile were more strong and manly, that stroke the eare with a kind of unevenesse."† Those who complain that, with regard to energy of expression, no writer of the present age can be compared with Raleigh and Bacon, ought to impute this circumstance to another cause than the study of purity and elegance. If the foundations of a nervous or weak style be laid in the author's manner of thinking, the matter may readily be explained: Raleigh and Bacon possessed greater genius than those who are brought into competition

with them.

I shall now endeavour to select some instances of the vigorous style; though the general character of a writer cannot be collected from detached passages.

About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited enquiry, with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original combinations, and at once exerted the powers of the scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be always cautious. His abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such contemp. tuous superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the

* Johnson's Lives of English Poets. + Jonson's Discoveries.

cause.

He seems to have adopted the Roman emperor's determination, oderint dum metuant; he used no allurements of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade. His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness; he took the words that presented themselves; his diction is coarse and impure, and his sentences are unmeasured.-Johnson's Life of Pope.

From the writings of this author a more admirable specimen might be selected; but I have chosen this, on account of its reference to our present subject.

Christianity was more calculated, than the superstitions of paganism, to impress the imagination and the heart. The rite of baptism, taught the follower of Odin to transfer his worship to Christ. To defend Christianity with his sword and his life, became a sacred vow, to which every knight was ambitious to submit. He considered himself as a saint, as well as a hero; and on the foundation of his piety, the successors of St. Peter were to precipitate the armies of Europe upon Asia, and to commence the crusades, those memorable monuments of superstition and heroism. The lady, not less than the knight, was to feel the influence of this religion. Society was to be disturbed with the sublime extravagance of fanatics, who were to court perfections out of the order of nature. Mortifications, austerities, and penances, were to be meritorious in proportion to their duration and cruelty. The powers and affections of the mind and the heart were to sicken and to languish in frivolous and fatiguing ceremonials. The eye of beauty was to sadden in monasteries and in solitude, or to light the unholy fires of a rampant priesthood. The deity was to be worshipped in abjectness and in terror, as if he contemned the works he had made, and took delight in human dejection and wretchedness.-Stuart's View of Society.

Stuart's style, though certainly deficient in fluency and in variety, is bold and vigorous; and upon some occasions it even rises to uncommon eloquence.

Wherever they marched, their route was marked with blood. They ravaged or destroyed all around them. They made no distinction between what was sacred and what was profane. They respected no age, or sex, or rank. What escaped the fury of the first inundation, perished in those which followed it. The most fertile and populous provinces were converted into deserts, in which were scattered the ruins of villages and cities, that afforded shelter to a few miserable inhabitants whom chance had preserved, or the sword of the enemy, wearied with destroying. had spared. The conquerors who first settled in the countries which they had wasted, were expelled or exterminated by new invaders, who, coming from regions farther removed from the civilized parts of the world, were still more fierce and rapacious. This brought new calamities

upon mankind, which did not cease until the north, by pouring forth successive swarms, was drained of people, and could no longer furnish instruments of destruction. Famine and pestilence, which always march in the train of war when it ravages with such inconsiderate cruelty, raged in every part of Europe, and completed its sufferings.-Robertson's View of Society.

Robertson's style is at once polished and energetic; and upon the whole, it appears the best model of an historical style that belongs to the English language.

Gibbon's style has sometimes been preferred to that of Robertson; but this seems to be an honour to which it is scarcely entitled. It evinces less correctness, less compression, and less of a genuine classical taste; it abounds with affected circumlocutions, and with epithets which have the appearance of being introduced for the sake of the sound, rather than of the sense. Yet, with all this want of chasteness, it displays so many of the flowers of an elegant fancy, that it is very far from being entitled to the contempt which it has sometimes experienced.*

THE VEHEMENT STYLE.

THE vehement rises a degree above the nervous style. The former however always includes the latter; for in order to attain to any vehemence of diction, an author must necessarily be possessed of strength.

* Dr. Knox has thus characterized the style of Gibbon's History: "The style displays not the honest warmth of a Robertson, but appears with an air of soft and subtle insinuation, better adapted to introduce a lurking poison. The words are well chosen; but the collocation of them is feeble and effeminate, though painfully elaborate and affected. There is scarcely a sentence throughout the work without an idle epithet, which, while it loads and wearies the ear, adds little to the meaning, and less to the force of the period. There is a disgusting affectation of fastidious delicacy. There is also a tedious sameness in the style, which renders the reading a toil, and which will gradually consign the work to its peaceful shelf, as soon as the fashionable world shall have found another idol."-Knox's Essays.

The vehement style is distinguished by a peculiar ardour of expression: it is the language of a man whose imagination and passions are strongly affected by the subject which he contemplates; and who is therefore negligent of inferior graces, but pours forth his eloquence with the fulness and rapidity of a torrent. It belongs to the higher species of oratory; and indeed. is rather expected from a man who declaims in a popular assembly, than from one who writes in the retirement of his closet. Of this style, the most striking examples in our language have been exhibited by Bolingbroke and Burke.

Lord Bolingbroke was fitted by nature to be the demagogue of a popular assembly. The style which predominates in all his political writings, is that of a person declaiming with heat, rather than writing with deliberation. He abounds with rhetorical figures, and pours himself forth with great impetuosity. He is copious to a fault; places the same thought before us in many different views, but generally with vivacity or ardour. He is bold rather than correct: his eloquence is a torrent that flows strong, but often muddy. His merit as a writer would have been considerable, if his matter had equalled his style; but while we find much to commend in the latter, the former is entitled to a scanty measure of praise. In his reasonings he is for the most part flimsy and false; in his political writings factious; and in what he calls his philosophical ones, irreligious and sophistical in the highest degree. The history of his life and writings affords a very striking and a very edifying example of the inutility of the most brilliant talents, unaccompanied by moral worth.

Burke was a man of the most splendid talents, and those talents had been improved by due cultivation. His imagination was fervent and brilliant, but his judgment was less vigorous than his imagination. In modern, and indeed in ancient times, the copiousness and force of his eloquence have not often been paralleled it rolls along like a rapid and impetuous torrent, and bears down every object that rises in opposition.