allusions in language will hardly be admitted as an imperfection or abuse of it. I confess in discourse where we seek rather pleasure and delight than information and improvement, such ornaments as are borrow'd from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words, eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment, and so indeed are perfect cheat. And therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them in harangues, or popular addresses, they are certainly in all discourses that pretend to inform * or instruct, wholly to be avoided; and where truth and knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault either of the language, or person, that makes use of them. What and how various they are, will be superfluous here to take notice; the books of rhetoric which abound in the world, will instruct those who want to be informed: only I cannot but observe, how little the preservation and improvement of truth, and knowledge, is the care and concern of mankind since the arts of fallacy are endow'd and prefer'd. 'Tis evident how much men love to deceive, and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation. And I doubt not it will be thought great boldness if not brutality in me, to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And 'tis in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived. LOCKE. On the Understanding, Vol. III., Chap. 10.

QUOTH Ralpho, Nothing but th' abuse

Of human learning you produce;
Learning, that cobweb of the brain,
Profane, erroneous, and vain ;
A trade of knowledge, as replete

As others are with fraud and cheat;

The florid, elevated, and figurative way, is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less: but instruction is to be given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into passion but reasoned into truth.

DRYDEN. Religio Laici, Preface.

H

An art t' incumber gifts and wit,
And render both for nothing fit;
Makes Light unactive, dull, and troubled,
Like little David in Saul's doublet:

A cheat that scholars put upon
Other men's reason and their own;

A sort of error, to ensconce
Absurdity and ignorance,
That renders all the avenues
To truth impervious and abstruse,
By making plain things, in debate,
By art, perplex'd, and intricate:
For nothing goes for sense or light
That will not with old rules jump right:
As if rules were not in the schools
Derived from truth, but truth from rules.
This pagan, heathenish invention
Is good for nothing but contention :
For as, in sword-and-buckler fight,
All blows do on the target light;
So when men argue, the great'st part
O' th' contest falls on terms of art,
Until the fustian stuff be spent,

And then they fall to th' argument.

Hudibras, Part I., Chap. 3.

OUR modern youth receive their education under certain declaimers called rhetoricians : a set of men who made their first appearance in Rome a little before the time of Cicero. And that they were by no means approved by our ancestors, plainly appears from their being enjoined, under the censorship of Croesus and Domitius to shut up their schools of impudence, as Cicero expresses it.

Dialogue on Oratory, ascribed to PLINY, translated by MELMOUTH.

FOR rhetoric, he could not ope

His mouth, but out there flew a trope:

And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of the speech, or cough,

one who for his excellence

In heightening words and shadowing sense.

BUTLER. Elephant in the Moon.

He had hard words ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by;

Else, when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd, like other folk.
For all a rhetorician's rules
Teach nothing but to name his tools.

THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
Drown'd! Drown'd!-Hamlet.

* And lovelier things have mercy shown

To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim
Except an erring sister's shame.

THE shadows lay along Broadway,

'Twas near the twilight tide

And slowly there a lady fair

Was walking in her pride.

Alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly,

Walk'd spirits at her side.

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet,

And Honour charm'd the air;

And all astir look'd kind on her,

And call'd her good as fair

For all God ever gave to her

She kept with chary care.

She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true-
For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo-
But honour'd well are charms to sell
If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair

A slight girl, lily-pale;

And she had unseen company

To make her spirit quail—

"Twixt want and scorn she walk'd forlorn,
And nothing could avail.

No mercy now can clear her brow

For this world's peace to pray;

For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way!

But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven
By man is cursed away!

THEN gently scan your brother man,

Still gentlier sister woman;

Though they may gang a kennin' wrang,

To step aside is human:

One point must still be greatly dark,

The moving Why they do it,

And just as lamely can you mark
How far, perhaps, they rue it.

Who made the heart, 'tis he alone
Decidedly can try us,

He knows each chord-its various tone,
Each spring each various bias :
Then at the balance let's be mute,

We never can adjust it;

What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what's resisted.*.

WILLIS.

BURNS. Address to the Unco Good.

* The difference between those whom the world esteems as good, and those whom it condemns as bad, is in many cases little else than that the former have been better sheltered from temptation.

HARE. Guesses at Truth.