A curious choice of fine words, for the embellishment of our diction upon a common subject, is as disgusting as an affected theatrical air in pronunciation, and is analogous to a foppishness of appearance in our persons: the fop shews you, that he means to be more than a gentleman, and the affected writer would be something more than a scholar. I cannot help being pleased and edified with Mr. Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs, where the attention is kept up by the disposition of the scenery, and the choice of the matter which is forcibly and pathetically expressed; but I find myself often hurt by the introduction of some fine word where a plain one would have done better, and would have been more proper to the solemnity of the occasion. In some other of his meditations, where the matter is not so striking, and more thinly spread, the pedantry is unpardonable, and the affectation altogether surfeiting, though his manner is greatly admired by persons of little judgment.

If the mind is sincere, it cannot be hunting for curious terms while it is impressed with deep sentiments, which will never fail to bring their words with them. When the mind is at the same time greatly and impertinently employed, it will be under the like suspicion with an actress upon the stage, who is seen to be solicitous about the plaits of her clothes, while she is uttering sentiments of horror and despair.

Let me also caution you against pedantic innovations in your spelling, which some writers are attempting to introduce amongst us. There are instances where a reformation in this respect may be reasonable and proper but I have seen many improvements which are improper and absurd, because our derivatives have come down to us from the Latin through the medium of French, and cannot be reduced to the

Latin itself without violence. If the principle should be admitted, whither will it carry us? If you write florish instead of flourish, because it comes from floreo, then you ought also to write flore, instead of flower, because it comes from flos, which has no w in it.

A style easy, pleasant, correct, and properly adorned, is of great value, because it gives life and beauty to every subject it sets forth. It is like the rich and improved soil of a garden, which adds to the size and form of every vegetable planted in it. How much less interesting are the actions of Cæsar, when Hirtius has the telling of them; but in his own style there is magic.

When a writer has a bad design, and would recommend to us any false and dangerous opinions, a good style has a very bad effect; as the soil of a garden, which improves wholesome vegetables, gives strength and magnitude to weeds. Men of ill principles know this; and are therefore very attentive and curious to please a reader's ear with elegance of expression and propriety of language. A devil undressed would be but little able to make his way in this world.

To form an English style, you must be conversant with the best English writers: you must not only read them, but converse with them, and live with them; weighing their expressions and imbibing their phraseology into your constitution: for which purpose you will do well if you extract what is most worthy of observation, and place it in a collection, that it may remain with you.

The authors I would recommend for this purpose are Bacon (Lord Verulam), Swift, South, Sprat, Addison, Roger North, and Dr. Middleton. Lord Baconexcels in richness of metaphor, and majesty of diction; as you will soon discover, if you read attentively his

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Advancement of Learning, a piece which every English scholar should almost know by heart: but as the English language has received many alterations since. Bacon's time, some of his phrases are now too formal and obsolete. Swift has such vigour, clearness, and plainness in his style as will never be exceeded; and his writing may be taken as the standard of the English language. South has strength and ornament; and exclusive of the goodness of his matter, is one of the finest declaimers in the world. Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society, is free and elegant to the highest degree, but rather too florid. When it is seen that the style is overmuch refined, we think a writer has a design upon us, and take offence at it. Dr. North, Master of Trinity College, in Cambridge, next after Barrow, and Greek professor, was so captivated with Sprat's History, that he said he would be content to read no other book for a whole year, if he might acquire by it the style of that writer *.

Roger North is excellent at a narrative; his language is animated, forcible, and humorous; but he is apt to transgress by introducing exotic words and expressions. Middleton in his English is a pattern of classical art and elegance. The colouring of honest writers may be compared to the beauties of a flower; but Middleton's ornaments are the colours of a snake: and therefore no young man should venture to improve himself from such an author, till he is settled in his principles, and can distinguish with safety between the manner and the matter, the art and the artificer.

Dryden never wrote much prose: but what he did

* Life of Sir Dudley and Dr. John North, by Roger North, Esq. Page 263.

write is capital in its kind; it is nervous in the sense, and highly adorned in the periods.

There is another excellent English writer but little known, Dr. Young, the father of the poet, who, in his two volumes of Sermons, discovers such strength and propriety of expression, with such chaste and genuine ornament of style, that he must charm and improve every judicious reader; for his materials are as excellent as the workmanship.

Anson's Voyage is a fine correct narrative, and a pattern in that sort of writing; I think it the nearest of any work we have in English to Cæsar's Commentaries. In some of the prose pieces of Dr. Johnson, especially his latter political pamphlets, you will find all the beauties of style and expression; of which, notwithstanding some very pardonable singularities, we must allow him to be a great master; and you may depend on him also as a friend to truth and virtue. His Lives of our English Poets, lately published, are inimitably written; and while they give you an example of style and composition, they will place before you, in a striking point of view, the inconsistency which is often found in the human character. They will shew you how the powers of wit and profligacy of morals, manly literature and childish improvidence, elegance of speech and roughness of manners, strength of imagination and absurdity of principle, are tempered together in some of the sons of Parnassus; whence you will infer, that virtue is preferable to genius, and that integrity without learning is better than learning without sobriety.

Our pleaders at the bar, and people of the law, having great practice in the English language, become well acquainted with the powers of it, and many of them have excelled as patterns of English elo

quence; of which many great examples occur in the charges which are to be found in the State Trials.

Since the time when I attempted to improve my English, (which I brought very bad from the University) some new writers have risen into fame, such as Hume, &c. who are to be regarded in literature as thieves and assassins are in society, and are therefore to be read with caution, as Middleton their kinsman. When truth and elegance meet together, we are safe as well as happy; but it is a dangerous employment, and scarcely worth the experiment, to gather flowers upon rotten ground, where there is a dirty bottom, which threatens to swallow us up.

LETTER IX.

ON THE IDIOMS OF LANGUAGE.

EVERY language has its own proper forms of expression, called idioms, which mean proprieties or peculiarities. If, when you speak or write in one language, you make use of the idiom proper to another, you are guilty of what is called a barbarism. The term is commonly applied to offences against the classical modes of speech, established by the authority of the best writers among the Latins or the Greeks. The Greeks and Romans accounted all nations barbarians but themselves; therefore to speak barbarous Latin is to speak in that language with the idiom peculiar to the language