is always to be avoided. We should never presume too much on the quickness of our hearers' apprehension; but our style ought to be such, that any person of common capacity may without effort comprehend our meaning. A flowing copious style is therefore required in all public speakers; but they ought at the same time to guard against such a degree of diffusion as may render them languid and tiresome.

In written compositions, a certain degree of conciseness possesses great advantages. It appears lively, keeps up the attention, makes a stronger impression, and gratifies the mind by supplying more exercise to the reader's faculties.--A concise comprehensive style is a great ornament in narration; and a superfluity of unnecessary words altogether improper. A judicious selection of striking circumstances, clothed in nervous and concise language, produces a delightful effect. In addresses to the passions, the concise manner ought to be adopted, in preference to the diffuse. When we become prolix, we are always in hazard of cooling the reader; and when the imagination and heart are properly engaged, they spontaneously supply many particulars to greater advantage than an author can display them. The case is different, when we address ourselves to the understanding; as in all matters of reasoning, explication, and instruction. There we naturally prefer a more free and diffuse manner. When you would captivate the fancy, or engage the heart, be concise; when you would inform the understanding, be more copious and diffuse. The understanding moves more slowly, and requires to be assisted in its operations.

A diffuse style generally abounds in long, and a concise style often in short periods. It is not however to be inferred that long or short sentences are fully characteristic of the one or the other. An author may always employ short periods, and yet be very diffuse: a scanty portion of sentiment may spread through a great number of those periods. Some authors, by the shortness and quaintness of their sentences, may at first view appear very concise, without being so in reality: they

throw the same thought into many different forms, and make it pass for a new one, only by giving a new turn to the expression. Thus, most of the French writers compose in short sentences, though their style in general is far from being concise. They commonly break down into two or three periods, a portion of thought which a British author would crowd into one. In like manner, an author may employ long periods, and yet be concise: his periods may be long, without being overloaded with any redundancy of expression.

The direct tendency of short sentences is to render style brisk and lively, but not always concise. They keep the mind awake by means of quick successive impulses, and give to composition more of a spirited character. Long periods are grave and stately; but, like all grave things, they are apt to become dull.

The following quotation may serve as an instance of the copious and diffuse style.

I can easily admire poetry, and yet without adoring it; I can allow it to arise from the greatest excellency of natural temper, or the greatest race of native genius, without exceeding the reach of what is human, or giving it any approaches of divinity, which is, I doubt, debased or dishonoured by ascribing it to any thing that is in the compass of our action, or even comprehension, unless it be raised by an immediate influence from itself. I cannot allow poetry to be more divine in its effects than in its causes, nor any operation produced by it to be more than purely natural, or to deserve any other sort of wonder than those of music, or of natural magic, however any of them have appeared to minds little versed in the speculations of nature, of occult qualities, and the force of numbers or of sounds. Whoever talks of drawing down the moon from heaven by force of verses or of charms, either believes not himself, or too easily believes what others told him, or perhaps follows an opinion begun by the practice of some poet, upon the facility of some people, who, knowing the time when an eclipse would happen, told them he would by his charms call down the moon at such an hour, and was by them thought to have performed it.-When I read that charming description in Virgil's eighth Eclogue of all sorts of charms and fascinations by verses, by images, by knots, by numbers, by fire, by herbs, employed upon occasion of a violent passion, from a jealous or disappointed love; I have recourse to the strong impressions of fables and of poetry, to the easy mistakes of popular opinions, to the force of imagination, to the secret virtues of several herbs, and to the powers of sounds: and I am sorry the natural history, or account

of fascination, has not employed the pen of some person of such excellent wit, and deep thought and learning, as Casaubon, who writ that curious and useful Treatise of Enthusiasm, and by it discovered the hidden or mistaken sources of that delusion, so frequent in all regions and religions of the world, and which had so fatally spread over our country in that age in which this treatise was so seasonably published. 'Tis much to be lamented that he lived not to complete that work in the second part he promised; or that his friends neglected the publishing it, if it were left in papers, though loose and unfinished. I think a clear account of enthusiasm and fascination, from their natural causes, would very much deserve from mankind in general, as well as from the commonwealth of learning; might perhaps prevent so many public disorders, and save the lives of so many innocent, deluded, or deluding people, who suffer so frequently upon account of witches and wizards. I have seen many miserable examples of this kind in my youth at home; and though the humour or fashion be a good deal worn out of the world within thirty or forty years past, yet it still remains in several remote parts of Germany, Sweden, and some other countries.-Temple on Poetry.

Of the concise style, I shall likewise subjoin an example.

A man, while awake, is conscious of a continued train of perceptions and ideas passing in his mind. It requires no activity on his part to carry on the train; nor can he at will add to the train any idea that has no connexion with it. At the same time we learn from daily experience, that the train of our thoughts is not regulated by chance; and if it depend not upon will, nor upon chance, by what law is it governed? The question is of importance in the science of human nature; and I promise beforehand that it will be found of great importance in the fine arts. It appears that the relations by which things are linked together, have a great influence in directing the train of thought. Taking a view of external objects, we see that their inherent properties are not more remarkable than their various relations which connect them together: one thing perceived to be a cause, is connected with its several effects; some things are connected by contiguity in time; others by contiguity in space; some are connected by resemblance, some by contrast; some go before, some follow: not a single thing appears solitary and altogether devoid of connexion; the only difference is, that some are ultimately connected, some more slightly, some near, some at a distance. Experience will satisfy us of what reason makes probable, that the train of our thoughts is in a great measure regulated by the foregoing connexions: an external object is no sooner presented to us in idea, than it suggests to the mind other objects with which it is connected; and in this manner is a train of thoughts composed. Such is the law of succession: whether an original law, or whether directed by some latent principle, is doubtful; and probably will for

ever remain so. This law however, is not inviolable: it sometimes happens, that an idea arises in the mind without that connexion; as for example after a profound sleep.-Kames's Elements of Criticism.

In this passage nothing is vague or redundant: every word and expression are appropriate.

THE NERVOUS AND THE FEEBLE STYLE.

It is generally imagined that the terms nervous and feeble, when applied to style, are synonymous with concise and diffuse. This however is not the case. It is indeed true that diffuse writers have, for the most part,some degree of feebleness, and that nervous writers will generally incline to conciseness of expression; but this is by no means a universal rule. There are instances of writers who, in the midst of a full and copious style, have maintained a great degree of strength; and on the other hand, an author may be parsimonious of his words, without attaining to any remarkable vigour of diction.

The foundations of a nervous or a weak style are laid in an author's manner of thinking. If his conceptions are clear and vivid, his expressions will generally be energetic. But if he have only an indistinct view of his subject, if his ideas be loose and wavering, if his genius be such, or, at the time of his writing, so carelessly exerted, that he has no firm hold of the conception which he would communicate to us, the marks of all this will plainly appear in his style. He will employ unmeaning words and loose epithets; his expressions will be vague and general, his arrangement indistinct and feeble; we shall be able to conceive somewhat of his meaning, but our conceptions will be faint and indefinite. Whereas a nervous writer,

whether he employ an extended or a concise style gives us always a clear impression of his meaning: his mind is full of his subject, and his words are all expressive; every phrase and every figure which he uses, tend to render more lively and complete the pleasure which he aims at communicating.

Every author ought to study to express himself with some degree of strength; for in proportion as he approaches the feeble, he becomes à bad writer. In all kinds of writing however the same degree of strength is not required. But the more grave and weighty any composition is, the more should this quality predominate in the style: history, philosophy, and some species of oratory require it in an eminent degree, while in fiction, letter-writing, and essays of a lighter cast, it is not so absolutely requisite.

Too great a study of strength, to the neglect of other desirable qualities of style, is apt to betray writers into a harshness of manner. Harshness arises from the use of unauthorised words, from forced inversions in the construction of sentences, and from the neglect of smoothness or harmony. This is reckoned the general fault of some of the earlier of our English classics, such as Hooker, Raleigh, Bacon, Milton, and other writers of the same period. The style of these writers is, for the most part, nervous and energetic in an eminent degree; but the language in their hands was very different from what it is at present. They were too fond of Latin idioms; and in the structure of their sentences, inversion is often carried to an unwarrantable length. Of that species of diction to which I here allude, it may be proper to produce one or two examples.

Though for no other cause, yet for this, that posterity may know we have not loosely, through silence, permitted things to pass away as in a dream, there shall be for men's information, extant thus much concerning the present state of the church of God established amongst us, and their careful endeavour which would have upheld the same.-Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity.

We see scholars many, more than others ordinarily, subject to melancholy, because their retired courses of life, and privacy of study, is a great means to feed that humour where it is naturally