tions of Demosthenes furnish the full and perfect example f this species of Style. Blair. $31. Lord BOLINGBROKE excelled in the Vehement Style. Among English writers, the one who has most of this character, though mixed, indeed, with several defects, is Lord Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke was formed by nature to be a factious leader; the demagogue of a popular assembly. Accordingly, the Style that runs through all his political writings, is that of one declaiming with heat, rather than writing with deliberation. He abounds in 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 life and ardour. He is bold, rather than correct; a torrent that flows strong, but often muddy. His sentences are varied as to length and shortness; inclining, however, most to long periods, sometimes including parentheses, and frequently crowding and heaping a multitude of things upon one another, as naturally happens in the warmth of speaking. In the choice of his words, there is great felicity and precision. In exact construction of sentences, he is much inferior to Lord Shaftsbury: but greatly superior to him in life and ease. Upon the whole, his merit, as a writer, would have been very considerable, if his matter had equalled his Style. But whilst we find many things to commend in the latter, in the former, as I before remarked, we can hardly find any thing to commend. In his reasonings, for the most part, he is Himsy and false; in his political writings, factious: in what he calls his philosophi cal ones, irreligious and sophistical in the highest degree. Ibid. 32. Directions for forming a STYLE. It will be more to the purpose, that I conclude these dissertations upon Style with a few directions concerning the proper method of attaining a good Style in general; leaving the particular character of that Style to be either formed by the subject on which we write, or prompted by the bent of genius. The first direction which I give for this purpose, is, to study clear ideas on the subject concerning which we are to write or speak. This is a direction which may at first appear to have small relation to Style. Its relation to it, however, is extremely close. The foundation of all good Style, is good sense, accompanied with a lively imagination. The Style and thoughts of a writer are so intimately connected, that, as I have several times hinted, it is fre quently hard to distinguish them. Whereminds are faint and indistinct, or perplexed ever the impressions of things upon our and confused, our Style in treating of such things will infallibly be so too. Whereas, what we conceive clearly and feel strongly, we will naturally express with clearness and with strength. This, then, we may be assured, is a capital rule as to Style, to think closely of the subject, till we have attained a full and distinct view of the matter which we are to clothe in words, till we become warm and interested in it; then, and not till then, shall we had expression begin to flow. Generally speak, ing, the best and most proper expressions, are those which a clear view of the subject suggests, without much labour or enquiry after them. This is Quinctilian's observation, Lib. viii. c. 1. Plerumque optima verba rebus cohærent, et cernuntur suo "lumine. At nos que rimus illa, tan66 quam lateant seque subducant. Ita nun66 quam putamus verba esse circa id de quo dicendum est; sed ex aliis locis pe"timus, et inventis vim asserimus *." Ibid. $33. Practice necessary for forming a STYLE. In the second place, in order to form a good Style, the frequent practice of composing is indispensibly necessary. Many rules concerning Style I have delivered; but no rules will answer the end without exercise and habit. At the same time, it is not every sort of composing that will improve Style. This is so far from being the case, that by frequent, careless, and hasty composition, we shall acquire cer tainly a very bad Style: we shall have more trouble afterwards in unlearning faults, and correcting negligences, than if we had not been accustomed to compocition at all. In the beginning, therefore, "The most proper words for the most part "adhere to the thoughts which are to be expressed by them, and may be discovered as by "their own light. But we hunt after them, as "if they were hidden, and only to be found in a corner. Hence, instead of conceiving the "words to lie near the subject, we go in quest "of them to some other quarter, and endea "your to give force to the expressions we have "found out." 66 66 we ought to write slowly and with much care. Let the facility and speed of writing be the fruit of longer practice. "Moram "et solicitudinein," says Quinctilian with the greatest reason, L. x.c. 3. "initiis impero. Nam primum hoc constituendum ac obtinendu.n est, ut quam obtimè "scribamus; celeritatem dabit consuetuPaulatim res faciliùs se ostendent, verba respondebunt, compositio prose66 quetur. Cuncta denique et in familia. "benè instituta in officio erunt. Summa "hæc est rei: citò scribendo non fit ut benè "scribatur; bene scribendo, sit ut cito." "do. Blair. $34. Too anxious a Care about WORDS to pass. to be avoided. We must observe, however, that there may be an extreme in too great and anxious a care about words. We must not retard the course of thought, nor cool the heat of imagination, by pausing too long on every word we employ. There is, on certain occasions, a głow of composition which should be kept up, if we hope to express ourselves happily, though at the expense of allowing some inadvertencies A more severe examination of these must be left to be the work of correction. For if the practice of composition be useful, the laborious work of correcting is no less so; it is indeed absolutely necessary to our reaping any benefit from the habit of composition. What we have written should be laid by for some little time, till the ardour of composition be past, till the fondness for the expressions we have used be worn off, and the expressions themselves be forgotten; and then reviewing our work with a cool and critical eye, as if it were the performance of another, we shall discern many imperfections which at first escaped us. Then is the season for pruning redundancies; for weighing the arrangement of sentences; for attending to the juncture and connecting particles; and bringing Style into a regular, correct, and supported form. This "Lima Labor" must be submitted to by * “I enjom that such as are beginning the "practice of composition, write slowly, and with anxions deliberation. Their great object "at first should be, to write as well as possible; "practice will enable them to write speedily "By degrees matter will offer itself still more readily; words will be at hand; composition will flow; every thing, as in the arrangement of a well-ordered family, will present itself in is proper place. The sum of the whole is is; by hasty composition, we shall never e sure the art of composing well; by writing well, we shall come to write speedily." all who would communicate their thoughts with proper advantage to others; and some. practice in it will soon sharpen their eye to the most necessary objects of attention, and render it a much more easy and practicable work than might at first be imagined. Ibid. $35. An Acquaintance with the best Authors necessary to the Formation of a STYLE. In the third place, with respect to the assistance that is to be gained from the writings of others, it is obvious that we ought to render ourselves well acquainted with the Style of the best authors. This is requisite, both in order to form a just taste in Style, and to supply us with a full stock of words on every subject. In reading authors with a view to Style, attention should be given to the peculiarities of their different manners; and in this and former Lectures I have endeavoured to suggest several things that may be useful in this view. I know no exercise that will be found more useful for acquiring a proper Style, than to translate some passage from an eminent English author, into our own words. What I mean is, to take, for instance, some page of one of Mr. Addison's Spectators, and read it carefully over two or three times, till we have got a firm hold of the thoughts contained in it: then to lay aside the book; to attempt to write out the passage from memory, in the best way we can; and having done so, next to open the book, and compare what we have written with the Style of the author. Such an exercise will, by comparison, shew us where the defects of our Style lie; will lead us to the proper atten tions for rectifying them; and, among the different ways in which the same thought may be expressed, will make us perceive that which is the most beautiful. Ibid. $36. A servile Imilation to be avoided. In the fourth place, I must caution, at the same time, against a servile imitation of any one author whatever. This is always dangerous. It hampers genius; it is likely to produce a stiff manner; and those who are given to close imitation, ge nerally imitate an author's faults as well as his beauties. No man will ever become a good writer, or speaker, who has not some degree of confidence to follow his own genius. We ought to beware, in particular, of adopting any author's noted phrases, or transcribing passages from him. Such a habit will prove fatal to all genuine composition. Infinitely better it is to have something that is our own, though of moderate beauty, than to affect to shine in borrowed ornaments, which will, at last, betray the utter poverty of our genius. On these heads of composing, correcting, reading, and imitating, I advise every student of oratory to consult what Quinctilian has delivered in the Tenth Book of his Institutions, where he will find a variety of excellent observations and directions, that well deserve attention. Blair. $ 37. STYLE must be adapted to the Subject. sent taste of the age, in writing, seems to lean more to Style than to Thought. It is much easier to dress up trivial and common sentiments with some beauty of expression, than to afford a fund of vigorous, ingenious, and useful thoughts. The latter requires true genius; the former may be attained by industry, with the help of very superficial parts. Hence, we find so many writers frivolously rich in Style, but wretchedly poor in sentiment. The public ear is now so much accustomed to a correct and ornamented Style, that no writer can, with safety, neglect the study of it. But he is a contemptible one, who does not look to something beyond it: who does upon his matter, and not lay the chief stress employ such ornaments of Style to recommend it, as are manly, not foppish, Majore animo," says the writer whom I have so often quoted, "aggredienda est "eloquentia; quæ si toto corpore valet, "ungues polire et capillum componere, 66 It non existimabit ad curam suam pertinere. Ornatus et virilis et fortis et sanctus sit; nec effeminatam levitatem et "fuco ementitum colorem amet; sanIbid. "guine et viribus niteat."* In the fifth place, it is an obvious but material rule, with respect to Style, that we always study to adapt it to the subject, and also to the capacity of our hearers, if we are to speak in public. Nothing merits the name of eloquent or beautiful, which is not suited to the occasion, and to the persons to whom it is addressed. is to the last degree awkward and absurd, to attempt a poetical florid Style, on occasions when it should be our business only to argue and reason; or to speak with elaborate pomp of expression, before persons who comprehend nothing of it, and who can only stare at our unseasonable magnificence. These are defects not so much in point of Style, as, what is much worse, in point of common sense. When we begin to write or speak, we ought previously to fix in our minds a clear conception of the end to be aimed at; to keep this steadily in our view, and to suit our Style to it. If we do not sacrifice to this great object every ill-timed ornament that may occur to our fancy, we are unpardonable: and though children and fools may admire, men of sense will laugh at us and our style. Ibid. 38. Attention to STYLE must not detract from Attention to THOUGHT. In the last place, I cannot conclude the subject without this admonition, that, in any case, and on any occasion, attention to Style must not engross us so much, as to detract from a higher degree of attention to the Thoughts. "Curam verbo"rum," says the great Roman Critic, "rerum volo esse solicitudinem."* A direction the more necessary, as the pre "To your expression be attentive; but "about your matter be solicitous." 66 39. Of the Rise of Poetry among The Romans, in the infancy of their fate, were entirely rude and unpolished. They came from shepherds; they were increased from the refuse of the nation's around them; and their manners agreed with their original. As they lived wholly on tilling their ground at home, or on plunder from their neighbours, war was their business, and agriculture the chief art they followed. Long after this, when they had spread their conquests over a great part of Italy, and began to make a considerable figure in the world;-even their great men retained a roughness, which they raised into a virtue, by calling it Roman Spirit; and which might often much better have been called Roman Barbarity. It seems to me, that there was more of austerity than justice, and more of insolence than courage, in some of their most celebrated actions. However that be, this is certain, that they were at first a nation of soldiers and husbandinen: roughness was long an applauded character among them; and a sort of rusticity reigned, even in their senate-house. In a nation originally of such a temper as this, taken up almost always in extending their territories, very often in settling the balance of power among themselves, and not unfrequently in both these at the same time, it was long before the politer arts made any appearance; and very long before they took root or flourished to any degree. Poetry was the first that did so; but such a poetry, as one might expect among a warlike, busied, unpolished people. lovers of poetry and good eating, whe seem to have attended the tables of the richer sort, much like the old provincial poets, or our own British bards, and sang there, to some instrument of music, the achievements of their ancestors, and the noble deeds of those who had gone before them, to inflame others to follow their great examples. The names of almost all these poets sleep in peace with all their works; and, if we may take the word of the other Roman writers of a better age, it is no great loss to us. One of their best poets represents them as very obscure and very contemptible; one of their best historians avoids quoting them, as too barbarous for politer ears: and one of their most judicious emperors ordered the greatest part of their writings to be burnt, that the world might be troubled with them no longer. All these poets therefore may very well be dropt in the account: there being nothing remaining of their works: and probably no merit to be found in them, if they had remained. And so we may date the beginning of the Roman poetry from Livius Andronicus, the first of their poets of whom any thing does remain to us; and from whom the Romans themselves seem to have dated the beginning of their poetry, even in the Augustan age. The first kind of poetry that was followed with any success among the Romans, was that for the stage. They were a very religious people; and stage plays in those times made no inconsiderable part in their public devotions; it is hence, perhaps, that the greatest number of their oldest poets, of whom we have any remains, and indeed almost all of them, are dramatic poets. Spence. Not to enquire about the songs of triumph, mentioned even in Romulus's time, there was certainly something of poetry among them in the next reign under Numa: a prince, who pretended to converse with the Muses, as well as with Egeria; and who might possibly himself have made the verses which the Salian priests sung in his time. Pythagoras, either in the same reign, or if you please some time after, gave the Romans a tincture of poetry as well as of philosophy; for Cicero assures us, that the Pythagoreans made great use of poetry and music: and probably they, like our old Druids, delivered most of their precepts in verse. Indeed the chief eployment of poetry, in that and the following ages, among the Romans, was of a religious kind. Their very prayers, and perhaps their whole liturgy, was poetical. They had also a sort of prophetic or sacred writers, who seem to have wrote generally in verse; and were so numerous, that there were above two thousand of their volumes remaining even to Augustus's time. They had a kind of The foremost in this list, were Livius, plays too, in these early times, derived Nævius, and Ennius. Livius's first play from what they had seen of the Tuscan (and it was the first written play that ever actors, when sent for to Rome to expiate appeared at Rome, whence perhaps Hoa plague that raged in the city. These race calls him Livius Scriptor) was acted seem to have been either like our dumb- in the 514th year from the building of the shews, or else a kind of extempore farces; city. He seems to have got whatever rea thing to this day a good deal in use all putation he had, rather as their first, than over Italy, and in Tuscany. In a more as a good writer; for Cicero, who adparticular manner add to these, that ex-mired these old poets more than they were tempore kind of jesting dialogues begun at their harvest and vintage feasts; and carried on so rudely and abusively after wards, as to occasion a very severe law to restrain their licentiousness-and those 40. Of LIVIUS, NAVIUS and ENNIUS. afterwards admired, is forced to give up Livius; and says, that his pieces did not deserve a second reading. He was for some time the sole writer for the stage; till Nævius rose to rival him, and proba bly bly far exceeded his master. Nævius ventured too on an epic, or rather an historical poem, on the first Carthaginian war. Ennius followed his steps in this, as well as in the dramatic way; and seems to have excelled him as much as he had excelled Livius; so much at least, that Lucretius says of him," That he was the first of their poets who deserved a lasting crown from the Muses." These three poets were actors as well as poets; and seem all of them to have wrote whatever was wanted for the stage, rather than to have consulted their own turn or genius. Each of them published, sometimes tragedies, sometimes comedies, and sometimes a kind of dramatic satires; such satires, I suppose, as had been occasioned by the extempore poetry that had been in fashion the century before them. All the most celebrated dramatic writers of antiquity excel only in one kind. There is no tragedy of Terence, or Menander; and no comedy of Actius, or Euripides. But these first dramatic poets, among the Romans, attempted every thing indifferently; just as the present fancy, or the demand of the people, led them. The quiet the Romans enjoyed after the second Punic war, when they had humbled their great rival Carthage; and their carrying on their conquests afterwards, without any great difficulties, into Greece, -gave them leisure and opportunities for making very great improvements in their poetry. Their dramatic writers began to act with more steadiness and judgment; they followed one point of view: they had the benefit of the excellent patterns the Greek writers had set them; and formed themselves on those models. Spence. 41. Of PLAUTUS. Plautus was the first that consulted his own genius, and confined himself to that species of dramatic writing, for which he was the best fitted by nature. Indeed, his comedy (like the old comedy at Athens) is of a ruder kind, and far enough from the polish that was afterwards given it among the Romans. His jests, are often rough, and his wit coarse; but there is a strength and spirit in him, that makes one read him with pleasure; at least, he is much to be commended for being the first that considered what he was most capable of excelling in, and not endeavouring to shine in too many different ways at once. Cæcilius followed his example in this par ticular; but improved their comedy so much beyond him, that he is named by Cicero, as perhaps the best of all the comic writers they ever had. This high character of him was not for his language, which is given up by Cicero himself as faulty and incorrect; but either for the dignity of his characters, or the strength and weight of his sentiments. 42. Of TERENCE. Ibid. Terence made his first appearance when Cæcilius was in high reputation. It is said, that when he offered his first play to the Ediles, they sent him with it to Cæcilius for his judgment of the piece. Cæcilius was at supper when he came to him; and as Terence was dressed very meanly, he was placed on a little stool, and desired to read away; but upon his having read a very few lines only, Cæcilius altered his behaviour, and placed him next himself at the table. They all admired him as a rising genius; and the applause he received from the public, answered the compliments they had made him in private. His Eunuchus, in particular, was acted twice in one day; and he was paid more for that piece than ever had been given before for a comedy: and yet, by the way, it was not much above thirty pounds. We may see by that, and the rest of his plays which remain to us, to what a degree of exactness and elegance the Roman comedy was arrived in his time. There is a beautiful simplicity, which reigns through all his works. There is no searching after wit, and no ostentation of ornament in him. All his speakers seem to say just what they should say, and no more. The story is always going on; and goes on just as it ought. This whole age, long before Terence, and long after, is rather remarkable for strength than beauty in writing. Were we to compare it with the following age, the compositions of this would appear to those of the Augustan, as the Doric order in building if compared with the Corinthian; but Terence's work is to those of the Augustan age, as the Ionic is to the Corinthian order: it is not so ornamented, or so rich; but nothing can be more exact and pleasing. The Roman language itself, in his hands, seems to be improved beyond what one could ever expect, and to be advanced almost a hundred years forwarder than the times he lived in. There are some who look upon this as one of the strangest phenomena in the learned world: but it is a phene Dd 3 menon |