expressions which ought very cautiously to be admitted into a dignified composition.

A vulgar expression, says Longinus, is sometimes much more significant than an elegant one. This may readily be granted; but however significant it may be, no expression should be used that is below the dignity of the subject treated.

The following quotation will serve to show how the most beautiful descriptions of poetry may be deformed by the introduction of one low or vulgar expression.

'Tis night, dread night, and weary Nature lies
So fast as if she never were to rise;

No breath of wind now whispers thro' the trees,
No noise at land, nor murmur in the seas;
Lean wolves forget to howl at night's pale noon,
No wakeful dogs bark at the silent moon,
Nor bay the ghosts that glide with horror by
To view the caverns where their bodies lie;
The ravens perch, and no presages give,
Nor to the windows of the dying cleave;
The owls forget to scream; no midnight sound
Calls drowsy Echo from the hollow ground;
In vaults the walking fires extinguished lie;

The stars, heaven's sentries, wink, and seem to die.-Lee.

The practice of describing objects and circumstances peculiar to ancient times, by terms characteristic of modern institutions and manners, may safely be classed among the chief improprieties of style. Gavin Douglas, the celebrated bishop of Dunkeld, has exhibited many curious instances of this practice in his Scottish version of the Æneid: the Sibyl, for example, is converted into a nun, and admonishes Æneas, the Trojan baron, to persist in counting his beads. This plan of applying the language of modern life to describe the past, has been adopted by much later writers: many preposterous instances occur in Dr. Blackwell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus; and Dr. Middleton, who, if not a more learned, is certainly a more judicious writer, has in his Life of Cicero been repeatedly betrayed into the same species of affectation. Balbus was general of the artillery to Cæsar; Cicero procured a regiment for

Curtius; Tedius took the body of Clodius into his chaise; Cœlius was a young gentleman of equestrian rank. In the following passage, which is Dr. Doig's translation of a quotation from the scholiast on Pindar, we encounter ladies at a very early period in the history of society; inasmuch as they are found in the very act of discovering the use of petticoats: "The same ladies, too, from a sense of decency, invented garments made of the bark of trees."

PRECISION OF STYLE.

THE third quality which enters into the composition of a perspicuous style, is precision. This implies the retrenching of all superfluity of expression. A precise style exhibits an exact copy of the writer's ideas. To write with precision, though this be properly a quality of style, he must possess a very considerable degree of distinctness in his manner of thinking. Unless his own conceptions be clear and accurate, he cannot convey to the minds of others a clear and accurate knowledge of the subject which he treats.

Looseness of style, which is properly opposed to precision, generally arises from using a superfluity of words. Feeble writers employ a multitude of words to make themselves understood, as they imagine, more distinctly; but, instead of accomplishing this purpose, they only bewilder their readers. They are sensible that they have not caught an expression that will convey their precise meaning; and therefore they endeavour to illustrate it by heaping together a mass of ill-consorted phrases. The image which they endeavour to present to our mind, is confused and inconsistent. When an author speaks of his hero's courage in the day of battle,

the expression is precise, and I understand it fully; but if, for the sake of multiplying words, he should afterwards extol his fortitude, my thoughts immediately begin to waver between those two attributes. In thus endeavouring to express one quality more strongly, he introduces another. Courage resists danger, fortitude supports pain. The occasion of exerting each of those qualities is different: and being led to think of both together when only one of them should be presented to me, I find my view rendered unsteady, and my conception of the hero indistinct.

An author may be very intelligible, without being precise. He uses proper words, and proper arrangements of words; but as his own ideas are loose and general, he cannot express them with any great degree of precision. Few authors in the English language are more easily understood than Archbishop Tillotson and Sir William Temple, yet neither of them can pretend to much precision; they are loose and diffuse, and very often do not select such expressions as are adapted for conveying simply the idea which they have in view.

All subjects do not require to be treated with the same degree of precision. It is requisite that in every species of writing this quality should in some measure be perceptible; but we must at the same time be upon our guard, lest the study of precision, especially in treating subjects which do not rigidly require it, should betray us into a dry and barren style; lest, from the desire of pruning more closely, we retrench all copiousness and ornament. A deficiency of this kind may be remarked in the serious compositions of Swift.

To unite copiousness with precision, to be flowing and graceful, and at the same time correct and exact in the choice of every word, is one of the highest and most difficult attainments in writing. Some species of composition may require more of copiousness and ornament, others more of precision and accuracy; and even the same composition may, in different parts, require a difference of style; but these qualities must never be totally sacrificed to each other.

"If," says Dr. Armstrong, "I was to reduce my own private idea of the best language to a definition, I should call it the shortest, clearest, and easiest way of expressing one's thoughts, by the most harmonious arrangement of the best chosen words, both for meaning and sound. The best language is strong and expressive, without stiffness or affectation; short and concise, without being either obscure or ambiguous; and easy, and flowing, and disengaged, without one undetermined or superfluous word."*

The want of precision is an unpardonable error in a writer who treats of philosophical subjects. On this account, the style of Lord Shaftesbury is highly exceptionable. The noble author seems to have been well acquainted with the power of words; those which he employs are generally proper and sonorous; and his arrangement is often judicious. His defect in precision is not so much imputable to indistinctness of conception, as to perpetual affectation. He is fond to excess of the pomp and parade of language; he is never satisfied with expressing anything clearly and simply; he must always give it the dress of state and majesty. Afraid of delivering his thoughts arrayed in a mean and ordinary garb, and allured by an appearance of splendour, he heaps together a crowd of superfluous words, and inundates every idea which he means to express with a torrent of copious loquacity. Hence perpetual circumlocutions, and many words and phrases employed to describe what would have much better been described by one. If he has occasion to introduce any author, he very rarely mentions him by his proper name. In the treatise entitled Advice to an Author, he employs two or three successive pages in descanting upon Aristotle, without naming him in any other manner than as "the master critic," the prince of critics," "the consummate philologist," "the grand master of art," "the mighty genius and judge of art." In the same manner "the grand poetic sire," "the philosophical patriarch,"

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* Armstrong's Miscellanies, vol. ii., p. 133.

and "his disciple of noble birth and lofty genius," are the only names by which he condescends to designate Homer, Socrates, and Plato. This method of distinguishing persons is extremely affected, but it is not so contrary to precision as the frequent circumlocutions which he employs to express the powers and affections of the mind. In one passage, he denominates the moral faculty," that natural affection and anticipating fancy, which makes the sense of right and wrong.' When he has occasion to mention self-examination, or reflection on our own conduct, he speaks of it as "the act of a man's dividing himself into two parties, becoming a self-dialogist, entering into partnership with himself, and forming the dual number practically within himself.”

In the following paragraph he wishes to shew, that by every vicious action, we injure the mind as much as a man would injure his body by swallowing poison, or inflicting on himself a wound.

Now, if the fabric in the mind or temper appeared to us such as it really is; if we saw it impossible to remove hence any one good or orderly affection, or to introduce an ill or disorderly one, without drawing on in some degree, that dissolute state which, at its height, is confessed to be so miserable; it would then undoubtedly be confessed, that since no ill, immoral, or unjust action can be committed, without either a new inroad and breach on the temper and passions, or a farther advancing of that execution already done; whoever did ill, or acted in prejudice of his integrity, good nature, or worth, would of necessity act with greater cruelty towards himself, than he who scrupled not to swallow what was poisonous, or who with his own hands should voluntarily mangle or wound his outward form or constitution, natural limbs or body.-Shaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue.

Such superfluity of words is offensive to every reader of a correct taste, and produces no other effect than that of perplexing the sense. To commit a bad action, is first, "to remove a good and orderly affection, and to introduce an ill or disorderly one;" next it is, "to commit an action that is ill, immoral, or unjust; and then "to do ill, or to act in prejudice of integrity, good nature, or worth." Nay, so very simple a thing as a man's wounding himself, is, " to mangle or wound