5th. I again repeat, peruse the best authors with a particular attention to their style. By this means you will lay in a store of words, and insensibly adopt their modes of expression. Take care to mark every thing peculiar in their manner, so that you may know how afterwards either to adopt or to avoid it.

6th. There is no practice better than to translate passages from good classical authors, or to give the thoughts of a good writer in your own language, and compare it afterwards carefully with the original. Take, for instance, a passage from Addison or Blair; read it three or four times, and when you have made yourself master of all the sentiments, lay aside the book, and clothe them in your own language; then compare your own performance, after you have rendered it as correct as possible, with the original: by this means you will be able to discover your own faults.

7th. Avoid all servile imitation of others; for by imitation you will be prevented from attempting any thing of your own, and your barrenness will at length be discovered. Never transcribe passages from other writers as your own: this effectually bars all efforts of genius,

and exposes you to the ridicule of men of learning.

8th. Always endeavour to adapt the style to the subject; for nothing can be more ridicu lous than to clothe grave subjects in a vain and gaudy dress; or embellish dry reasoning, which must convince only by strength of argument. In oratorical compositions you must also adapt your discourse to the generality of your audience: nothing can be more absurd than to use extravagant phrases, or unknown words, before an unlearned multitude; the ignorant may admire, but the learned will smile.

9th. Give at all times more attention to your thoughts than to your words. We may learn almost mechanically a few fine phrases; but in a man of true genius alone the sentiments are grand and noble.

I do not mean, however, to discourage you from the cultivation of a good style. The remark of Quinctilian, "that a clear conception will generally be attended with correct expression" is so far true, that we know the knowledge of words always accompanies the knowledge of things; and as almost all our knowledge is acquired by means of words, we cannot have

the one without the other. Otherwise the attainment of arts and sciences appears to me a perfectly distinct branch of study, and I can conceive a man master of even a practical art, such as chemistry or mechanics, and to want names for his ideas. However, thus far is certain, that the elegant part of speaking or writing is at least a distinct study, and therefore not to be neglected; though it will be found of little value without a sound knowledge of things.

LETTER XV.

Didactic Composition—Analysis and Synthesis.

MY DEAR JOHN,

In my last letter I promised to conduct you from words to things; from style to the matter and arrangement of composition. In pursuing the order also which I before pointed out, we are to consider didactic composition.

I do not know a greater difficulty than that which presents itself to a young writer with respect to the method or arrangement which he is to pursue in an essay or discourse on any given subject. Ideas crowd upon his mind; he sees the subject in various points of view; but he is uncertain what observation ought first to be introduced to the notice of his reader, or in what light his subject will appear the clearest, and to the most advantage. Here the rules of art may occasionally deliver him from some embarrassment; and at least a general process

may be laid down as the means of investigating truth, or communicating knowledge.

Logicians have established, and I think not improperly, two methods in which didactic or argumentative disquisitions are to be conducted. These methods are analysis and synthesis. The analytical method is when we proceed from particulars to the establishment of some general truth. Thus Derham, in his physico theology, ascends from the investigation of the several parts of nature, to the proof that they must be the work of an all powerful and intelligent being. Dr. Clarke, on the contrary, in his admirable work on the being and attributes of God, commences with a simple proposition, that "something must have existed from eternity; he proceeds to shew what must have been the nature and attributes of such a being, and by the force of this one fundamental axiom, establishes all the principles which are the basis of natural, I might add of revealed religion.

A similar method is adopted in Warburton's Divine Legation, a work however which I never admired. The foundation of this work is laid in a kind of syllogism, though I confess I cannot see that the consequence flows naturally from