to might be said to grind the sentences between his teeth, which he afterwards committed to paper, and threw out crusts to the critics, or bon-mots to the electors of Westminster (as we throw bones to the dogs), without altering a muscle, and without the smallest tremulousness of voice or eye!* I certainly so far agree with the above theory as to conceive that no style is worth a farthing that is not calculated to be read out, or that is not allied to spirited conversation but I at the same time think the process of modulation and inflection may be quite as complete, or more so, without the external enunciation; and that an author had better try the effect of his sentences on his stomach than on his ear. He may be deceived by the last, not by the first. No person, I imagine, can dictate a good style or spout his own compositions with impunity. In the former case, he will flounder on before the sense or words are ready, sooner than suspend his voice in air; and in the latter he can supply what intonation he pleases, without consulting his readers. Parliamentary

*As a singular example of steadiness of nerves, Mr Tooke on one occasion had got upon the table at a public dinner to return thanks for his health having been drunk. He held a bumper of wine in his hand, but he was received with considerable opposition by one party, and at the end of the disturbance, which lasted for a quarter of an hour, he found the wine-glass still full to the brim.

speeches sometimes read well aloud; but we do not find, when such persons sit down to write, that the prose-style of public speakers and great orators is the best, most natural, or varied of all others. It has always either a professional twang, a mechanical rounding off, or else is stunted and unequal. Charles Fox was the most rapid and even hurried of speakers; but his written style halts and creeps slowly along the ground.* A speaker is necessarily kept within bounds in expressing certain things, or in pronouncing a certain number of words, by the limits of the breath or power of

* I have been told, that when Sheridan was first introduced to Mr Fox, what cemented an immediate intimacy between them was the following circumstance. Mr Sheridan had been the night before to the House of Commons, and being asked what his impression was, said he had been principally struck with the difference of manner between Mr Fox and Lord Stormont. The latter began by declaring in a slow, solemn, drawling, nasal tone that "when he considered the enormity and the unconstitutional tendency of the measures just proposed, he was hurried away in a torrent of passion and a whirlwind of impetuosity," pausing between every word and syllable; while the first said (speaking with the rapidity of lightning, and with breathless anxiety and impatience), that "such was the magnitude, such the importance, such the vital interest of this question, that he could not help imploring, he could not help adjuring the house to come to it with the utmost calmness, the utmost coolness, the utmost deliberation." This trait of discrimination instantly won Mr Fox's heart.

respiration: certain sounds are observed to join in harmoniously or happily with others: an emphatic phrase must not be placed where the power of utterance is enfeebled or exhausted, &c. All this must be attended to in writing, (and will be so unconsciously by a practised hand,) or there will be hiatus in manuscriptis. The words must be so arranged, in order to make an efficient readable style, as "to come trippingly off the tongue." Hence it seems that there is a natural measure of prose in the feeling of the subject and the power of expression in the voice, as there is an artificial one of voice in the number and co-ordination of the syllables; and I conceive that the trammels of the last do not (where they have been long worn) greatly assist the freedom or the exactness of the first.

Again, in poetry, from the restraints in many respects, a greater number of inversions, or a latitude in the transposition of words is allowed, which is not conformable to the strict laws of prose. Consequently a poet will be at a loss, and flounder about for the common or (as we understand it) natural order of words in prose-composition. Dr Johnson endeavoured to give an air of dignity and novelty to his diction by affecting the order of words usual in poetry. Milton's prose has not only this drawback, but it has also the disadvantage of being formed on a classic

model. It is like a fine translation from the Latin; and, indeed, he wrote originally in Latin. The frequency of epithets and ornaments, too, is a resource for which the poet finds it difficult to obtain an equivalent. A direct, or simple prosestyle, seems to him bald and flat; and, instead of forcing an interest in the subject by severity of description and reasoning, he is repelled from it altogether by the absence of those obvious and meretricious allurements, by which his senses and his imagination have been hitherto stimulated and dazzled. Thus there is often at the same time a want of splendour and a want of energy in what he writes, without the invocation of the Museinvita Minerva. It is like setting a rope-dancer to perform a tumbler's tricks-the hardness of the ground jars his nerves; or it is the same thing as a painter's attempting to carve a block of marble for the first time-the coldness chills him, the colourless uniformity distracts him, the precision of form demanded disheartens him. So in prosewriting, the severity of composition required damps the enthusiasm, and cuts off the resources of the poet. He is looking for beauty, when he should be seeking for truth; and aims at pleasure, which he can only communicate by increasing the sense of power in the reader. The poet spreads the colours of fancy, the illusions of his own mind, round every object, ad libitum; the prose-writer is

compelled to extract his materials patiently, and bit by bit, from his subject. What he adds of ornament, what he borrows from the pencil, must be sparingly and judiciously inserted. The first pretends to nothing but the immediate indulgence of his feelings: the last has a remote practical purpose. The one strolls out into the adjoining fields or groves to gather flowers: the other has a journey to go, sometimes through dirty roads, and at others through untrodden and difficult ways. It is this effeminacy, this immersion in sensual ideas, or craving after continual excitement, that spoils the poet for his prose-tasks. He cannot wait till the effect comes of itself, or arises out of the occasion he must force it upon all occasions, or his spirit droops and flags under a supposed imputation of dulness. He can never drift with the current, but is always hoisting sail, and has his streamers flying. He has got a striking simile on hand; he lugs it in with the first opportunity, and with little connexion, and so defeats his object. He has a story to tell; he tells it in the first page, and where it would come in well, has nothing to say; like Goldsmith, who having to wait upon a noble lord, was so full of himself and of the figure he should make, that he addressed a set speech, which he had studied for the occasion, to his lordship's butler, and had just ended as the nobleman made his appearance. The prose ornaments of the