tion is introduced, there is room for a display of eloquence, and then the composition may assume something of a rhetorical cast. For reasons which I shall afterwards assign, I think Mr. Hume's history very faulty; but I cannot deny him the praise of a clear and unaffected style, which renders his narrative generally intelligible and pleasant. Mr. Gibbon, on the contrary, has more eloquence, and he describes better than he narrates.

After all that I have urged on this topic, you will derive more of practical improvement from the careful perusal of good authors, than from any rules that can be laid down. Take Pope, Addison, Burke, Robertson, Johnson, (particularly the preface to his dictionary) and Gibbon; and observe carefully how each of these great writers has arranged his words, and constructed his periods. You will find something characteristic in each with respect to the harmony of their numbers, and the structure of their sentences; but though I advise you to study them all, I do not recommend a servile imitation of any. If I was to propose a model for general use, it would be the style of Mr. Addison; for in copying, that you are copying

the expression of nature itself. He is sufficiently pure though not faultless. He is always perspicuous, natural and easy. In harmony he has never been excelled; and his periods are constructed with the art, dexterity and promptitude of a master workman. They are never deficient in grace, though it must be allowed that sometimes they want strength, but that was not an object considering the nature of his subjects. On this account Mr. Addison shewed his judgment in not attempting the part of an orator in parliament. His style was not adapted to it. In fine, to use the words of an incomparable critic, and biographer :-" Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison."

LETTER IX.

Ornament.-Amplification.

MY DEAR JOHN,

THE real ornaments of composition, whether prose or poetry, can proceed only from genius, from a mind rich in such ideas as are the fruits of observation, active in forming combinations, and nice in selecting such as are interesting and beautiful, and adapted to the subject. This observation will naturally recal to your me mory what I have advanced in my second letter, that it is the clear and striking display of a number of circumstances which are calculated to exhibit a picture strongly to the mind, that renders a style interesting and animated. Com. pare the description of the storm in Virgil's first Æneid, that of Milton's Death and Sin, or the account of a battle by à Livy or a Gibbon, with the narratives or descriptions of ordinary writers, and you will soon perceive the magie touch of genius.

An historian, or even a poet, might have expressed or described the surprise of the northern invaders at finding themselves transported from a bleak and unfriendly region, to the genial climate of Italy, and yet not raise the emo. tions which Mr. Gray excites even in a few lines

"With grim delight the brood of winter view,
"A brighter day, and skies of azure hue;
"Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose,
"And quaff the pendant vintage as it grows."

Here even every epithet speaks something to the purpose: the "grim delight," the "brood of winter," the brightness of the day, and the "skies of azure hue," the rose and the grape, so beautifully introduced, are all picturesque, and have a finer effect than a formal description.

Again Shakspeare might have moralized, as many a popular preacher does, upon the progress of human life from infancy to manhood, and its subsequent decline and melancholy termination. He might have compared it to a drama, remarked on the variety of characters which we are called upon by Providence to as

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sume; and he might have concluded, like the gentleman to whom I have alluded, with some good common-place remark, as "he is a happy man, who plays well the part which is assigned him." But this would not attract and engage the reader like the picture which he draws of the different and almost contrasted characters in which the same man may be appointed to appear

"All the world's a stage,

"And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits, and their entrances;

"And one man in his time plays many parts,
"His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking, in the nurse's arms:
"And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
"And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school: and then, the lover;

"Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

"Made to his mistress' eye-brow: then, a soldier ;
"Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
"Zealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

"Even in the cannon's mouth: and then, the justice;
"In fair round belly, with good capon lin❜d,
"With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
"Full of wise saws and modern instances,
"And so he plays his part: the sixth age shifts