common editions of Terence's Plays, manifeftly relate. But fuch accompaniments were by no means confined to the de clamation of the theatre. Solon, we are told, when he pro mulgated his laws to the Athenians, accompanied them by the mufic of his lyre; and there was, among that refined people, a peculiar measure, or melody, called the Nomicmelody, which was appropriated to the promulgation of public ordinances. We are alfo informed, both by Cicero and Quintilian, that when Caius Gracchus was declaiming in public, he was accuftomed to have a musician at his back, in order to give him the proper tones, with a pipe or flute.. It is impoffible to refufe our affent to fuch direct evidence, or to doubt that the Greeks and Romans, on public occafions at least, made use of a kind of musical recitation. The account which the ancient Grammarians and Rhetoricians give of the accents, and the rules which they lay down refpecting them, all tend to eftablifh the fame doctrine; and to prove that, even in common reading or fpeaking, the ancients were taught, on fome occafions, to raife their voices gradually to a certain mufical pitch; on other occafions, to deprefs the mufical tone of the voice; and on other occasions, firit to pafs from grave to acute, and immediately after from acute to grave. Such were plainly the purpofes which the ancient accents, the acute, the grave, and the circumflex, were intended to serve. But it by no means follows, from all this, that the ancient declaimers used a melody much refembling our modern mufic. The only mufical fcale, or fyftem of intervals, which we now employ, is the Diatonic; but the ancients made ufe of two others, the Chromatic and the Enharmonic, of which the intervals were greatly fmaller, and which were therefore much better adapted to the purpofes of recitation. Or we may fuppofe that the mufic which was allotted to declamation, differed in fome refpects from all the other fyftems. Its intervals might be fettled by rules peculiar to itfelf; and its afcents and defcents might be by imperceptible gradations from acute to grave; and the contrary, rather than by abrupt tranfitions, from one pitch to another, as is the cafe with diatonic mufic. In fact, we ourselves, in ordinary converfation, and fill more in declamation, make ufe of a melody or musical accompaniment of this kind, without being aware of it, The ancients made it an object of peculiar attention, and regulated it by fixed principles; the moderns have no rules concerning it, nevertheless they employ it to a certain degree, prompted purely by the impulle of nature, and the dictates of good talle, A a 4 Mr. Mr. Barron proceeds, in his third Lecture, to confider what he calls the "faculties which influence the arrange ment of words in fentences;" and in his fourth, he examines the principles of grammar. We fhall not difpute the propriety of introducing into a fyftem of Rhetoric, difquifitions concerning the natural meaning and origin of the different claffes of words; of nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, &c. But we certainly expected in fuch a fyftem, ufhered into the world in the year 1806, fomething better than the account which Mr. Barron has given of the nature of the different parts of fpeech. This is, in fact, nothing better than might be extracted from Voffius, or any of the old grammarians; and takes no notice whatever of the new lights which have been thrown on this interefting fubject, by the labours of Mr. Horne Tooke, and other modern Philologifts. The principles of grammar occupy Mr. Barron dur ing his fourth, fifth, fixth, and great part of his feventh Lectures. He then proceeds to his more proper fubject, the confideration of the qualities of a good ftyle. Thefe he confiders as reducible to two general claffes-perfpicuity and ornament. The first of these he fubdivides into the qualities of purity, propriety, and precifion; and the fecond, into melody, inverfion, and figures. Of this claffification of the qualities of ftyle, we have to obferve, that it is almost verbatim copied from Dr. Blair; and, indeed, this is not the only occafion on which the prefent writer feems to have been liberally indebted to the labours of that celebrated Lecturer, But the claflification itself appears to us to labour under a great defect. Perfpicuity cannot well be confidered as a genus, of which purity, propriety, and precifion, are the fpecies. It is rather an independent quality of ftyle, which can only be attained by attention to its own peculiar rules; and which will not be completely fecured, although we should be able to write without offending any of the principles of purity, propriety, or precifion. This defect has more ferious confequences than confidered as a mere error of arrangement. It occafions a deficiency of rules for attaining perfpicuity of ftyle; a quality which is of the first importance in writing, and in which the very beft authors are occafionally liable to fail. Under the head of propriety of style, we find Mr. Barron treating of certain defects which belong more properly to the fubject of purity. Such are the grammatical inaccuracies of which he takes notice; for to write with purity, is nothing elfe than to avoid every deviation from the grammar and idiom of the language which we employ. With thefe exceptions, Mr. Barron's remarks remarks on the various properties of a good ftyle, and on the arrangement and ftructure of fentences, may be read with confiderable advantage. We do not, however, feel the jufftice of all his criticifms; and think, on fome occafions, that he has been rather unwife, in trying his powers on authors whofe reputation cannot now easily be fhaken, Few readers of tafte, we apprehend, will coincide with him in opinion, that the word fublimi, in the following lines of Horace is redundant and tautological. "Quod fi me vatibus Lyricis inferes, Sublimi feriam fidera vertice." The fubject of figures is treated by Mr. Barron with great copiousness, as it occupies nearly the whole of nine Lectures, from the 16th to the 24th inclufive. He has not, however, been able to give a very fatisfactory account of what it is that conftitutes a figure, a defect which pervades every fyftem of Rhetoric with which we are acquainted. It is furely very indefinite to fay, that " figurative communication includes. every embellishment by which language addreffes the imagination, and fometimes the paffions.' Yet fuch is the general account given by this author of the nature of figures; nor is it rendered much more precife by his particular illuftrations. He feems inclined to abandon the ancient divifion of this fubject into figures of words or tropes; and figures of thought or expreffion, which we think has its ufe, although the boundaries of these two claffes have not been very precifely fixed. On the fubject of metaphor, the firft figure of which the author treats, we find many pertinent, if not original, obfervations. But the view of this figure is defective, as no notice whatever is taken of its fubordinate fpecies, the metonymy, fynecdoche, autonomafia, &c. of which specific examples ought to have been given. Comparison is alfo very fully, and on the whole fatisfactorily handled. The following obfervations are judicious and worthy of attention. "The difficulty of finding new and fplendid fimiles, on ac count of the anticipation of preceding Poets, feems to be one of the chief inconveniencies of poetical compofition. The fubjects in nature adapted to illuftrate the operations of the stronger paffions, are perhaps not very numerous; as it cannot be doubted that much time and induftry have been employed to discover them, though, it must be confeffed, without correfpondent fuccefs. Nei ther can it be fuppofed that modern genius, in like circumstances, is not qualified to rival that of antiquity, even in its moft illuf trious exhibitions. It remains then only to conclude, that cir. cumstances are more unfavourable; that the field of illustration has has been in fome meafure pre-occupied and exhausted; and thatthe chief channel to excellence now left open is to change the attitudes, and improve the fituations of thofe confpicuous objects in nature, which have fo far monopolized the prerogative of being introduced as figures in comparifon. All the fimiles of all the Epic and Dramatic Poets, whofe works have been preferved, are not very numerous; and of thefe many are exceptionable; which affords an additional proof, that the fubjects of comparifon are rare, or that the art of exploring and exhibiting them is very arduous and uncommon." "Though fimiles," fubjoins the author afterwards," are often the work of the boldett and most fervid fancy, yet none of the ornaments of language are, perhaps, more allied to deficiency of genius and tafte, both in the writers and the readers. Few authors, who have matter of real confequence to advance, find either time or inclination to hunt for refemblances; while thofe who are confcious of poffeffing neither ingenious obfervation nor new and important arguments, have commonly recourse to this fecondary method of acquiring applaufe. The great part of man. kind have made little progrefs in the improvement of their underftanding, which is a laborious and tedious task; they are of course much more indifferent to acquire knowledge than to please their imagination, which yields them an inferior gratification without much culture." Lect. 19. Perfonification, Allegory, and Apoftrophe, are next treated of by this a thor, but with fome little degree of con fufion. He confiders as examples of Allegory, many figur ative expreffions, which more ftrictly belong to the clafs of Metaphor; fuch as Virgil's reprefentation of the compo fition of his Georgics, under the figure of a chariot-race. "Sed nos immenfum fpatiis confecimus æquor, Et jam tempus equûm fumantia folvere colla.". This, and various other paffages which Mr. Barron has quoted, differ in nothing from the common inftances of metaphorical expreffion. To conftitute an Allegory, the figurative parallel muft be carried through a much more minute and lengthened detail. We find a fimilar confufion in his examples of perfonification and apoftrophe. It is the bufinefs of perfonification to animate the lifelefs objects of nature; and to addre's the trees, the rocks, and the floods, as if they were endowed with intelligence and fenfibility. Apoftrophe has a different function; it addresses the dead, or abfent, as if they were prefent and liftening to us. When Cicero, therefore, addreffes the genius of philofophy, and exclaims, "O vitæ, philofophia dux! virtutis indagatrix, expultrixque vitiorum! quid non modo nos fed omnino vita hominum hominum fine te effe potuiffet?" he does not employ apol trophe, as Mr. Barron allerts, but perfonification, and the fame is true of fome more of his examples. Hyperbole, climax, and fome other figures, are next confidered by Mr. Barron; and his remarks on flyle are concluded by an account of the various general divisions of the characteristics of ftyle which have been propofed by different rhetoricians. The characteristics which he himself adopts and examines, are the concise and nervous, the diffuse, the fimple, plain, and neat; the elegant, the florid, the af fected, and vehement ftyles. It would feem as if there were much uncertainty and caprice in affigning to an author his proper place in fuch an arrangement. Demetrius Phalereus grouped into the fame clafs Thucydides and Herodotus, whom he confiders as furnishing examples of the fame cha racters of ftyle, elevation; although no two writers can differ more in refpect of flyle than thefe eminent hiftorians., With a like inconfiftency he claffes together Homer, Xenophon, and Sappho, as examples of the ornamented flyle. Mr. Barron appears fcarcely more fortunate when he illuftrates the concife and nervous ftyle by the examples of Tacitus and Montefquieu, who, though both eminent writers, certainly wrote in a very different manner. In treating of the fimple ftyle, the author characterizes Swift in the following judicious terms. "Of all writers, ancient or modern, who have attempted this ftyle, Swift is perhaps the most eminent. His words are chofen with much propriety, and he never employs a foreign or a novel word when the language affords another of established reputation to appear in its place. His arrangement is natural and eafy, and though fome of his fentences are extended to a confiderable length, they are never embarrassed or obfcure. He feldom introduces any other figure than a metaphor, which is rarely prolonged beyond a fingle word. The reader is charmed with the wit, the humour, the learning, or the ingenuity of his fentiments, which are conveyed with a perfpicuity and energy that feem to bid defiance to ornament. Had he attended a little more to the neatnefs of his fentences, and had he not indulged in fome fingular uses of particles and prepofitions, he had (would have) attained the higheft merit this fpecies of ftyle can eafily acquire, and realifed the most complete idea of it we can readily conceive. It muft at the fame time be observed, that his writings are not all equally finished. His political papers, the Contefts and Diffentions at Athens and Rome, which were written early in life, and in the end of the 17th century, difcover much learning, a comprehen. five and well-informed mind; but they are carelefs, and fome |