famous Spectator, although Addison hoped that it was found in all quiet circles that met "for reading and tea and bread and butter." Now the works of any known author have a practically unlimited sphere of circulation. Now America and our colonies absorb vast numbers of our books. Now life on lonely sheep stations is enlivened by well-chosen libraries; the literary needs of soldiers, sailors and emigrants, and even of the temporary inmates of hospitals are provided for; and now, no one of the many schemes for elevating dreary lives is complete without a library as one of the most humanizing of influences. The craving for books, once awakened, grows rapidly into a fixed taste, and with the admiration for books the general respect for authors grows apace.

In

Macaulay has drawn a vivid picture of the miseries. of writers who lived in an age when there were so few readers that the means of livelihood were not to be obtained even by the most unremitting work. pathetic and memorable words he tells us how the best of them had to sue for some great man's favour to procure them any hope of earning even the barest necessaries; and going over the long roll of great names that illuminate our literary past, he shows that, till the days of Pope, no one of them had achieved independence by his art. Whilst Dryden, the greatest of all men of letters in his time, was glad at seventy years of age to take three hundred pounds for ten thousand verses, "which only he of living men could have written," Pope, at thirty, was owner of six thousand pounds made by his pen, and was living in such learned ease and affluence as had till then been unknown by English authors.

Since those days there has naturally been an increase in "the mob of gentlemen who write with ease," but even before the good days of authorship dawned, the profession was felt by those who followed it to be so glorious and so honourable that aspirants were never wanting, and Lintot's and Tonson's shops were never without their crowds of "lean men that looked like

good scholars" seeking work to do even at the poorest price, and meekly bearing the browbeatings of the then all-powerful publishers. And, save by the prophetic eye, which Ruskin holds to be one attribute of genius, these struggling men could see but small reward for their devotion to letters. In society they had no acknowledged place. Miss Berry, writing of the fashionable life of her girlhood, tells us that authors, actors and composers were all alike regarded as profligate vagrants. Lady Bradshaigh, the romantic admirer of the novels of Richardson, stooped to the meanness of writing under his portrait the name of Dickenson, lest her aristocratic friends should find that she could degrade herself so far as to be on friendly terms with even so famous an author. And in such comparatively recent times as Mrs. Radcliffe's, we find that most blood-curdling of authors declaring that the very thought of appearing as a novelist shocked her every feeling of delicacy, and that the sentiments of old gentility cherished by her relations made her authorship repugnant to them.

All this is strangely changed now. We have learnt to pay such honour to our literary men and women that everything concerning them is of interest to the reading public. Indeed, as we have lately seen in the cases of Dickens, Carlyle and Rossetti, their personal possessions become sacred and most valuable relics, eagerly competed for, and destined most probably to become in time national property like the few belongings of poor Goldsmith at South Kensington, which have so touching an interest for us when we remember how little reverence or love his own generation paid him.

As we have pointed out, a new race of readers has arisen, ever eager to welcome fresh literary lights. Publishers no longer bully and browbeat-their very rejections are softened by courtesy, and one was recently known to complain that so great is the change in the relationship between their authors and themselves that the simple and unwary publisher is more likely to be

drawn into the net spread abroad for him by astute writers, than to make large profits out of their confiding innocence. Without going so far as to agree with his opinion-which has at least the charm of originality-we must see that the improvement in the financial position of authors is distinctly marked.

Having thus tried to demonstrate the great pleasures and advantages which are to be found in the pursuit of literature, and in the cultivation of the undeveloped powers possessed by so many who would fain employ them did they but know how to begin, we confidently offer this work for their acceptance, believing it will assist them in turning the dream of literary success into a happy reality.

PURITY OF STYLE.

STYLE has been defined to be the peculiar manner in which a man expresses his conceptions through the medium of language. It differs from mere language or words. The words which an author employs may be unexceptionable, yet his style may be chargeable with great faults; it may be dry, stiff, feeble, affected. The style of an author is always intimately connected with his manner of thinking: it is a picture of the ideas which arise in his mind, and of the manner in which they arise. Hence the difficulty of drawing an exact line of separation between the style and the sentiment.

All that can be required of a writer is to convey his ideas clearly to the mind of others, and, at the same time, to clothe them in an advantageous dress. The two general heads of perspicuity and ornament, therefore, comprehend all the qualities of a good style. Perspicuity demands our chief care; for, without this quality, the richest ornaments of language only glimmer through the dark, and puzzle, instead of pleasing, the reader. An author's meaning ought always to be obvious, even to the most careless and inattentive reader, so that it may strike his mind, as the light of the sun strikes our eyes. We must study, not only that every reader may understand us, but that it shall be impossible for him to misunderstand us. If we are obliged to follow a writer with much care, to pause, and to read over his sentences a second time, in order to comprehend them fully, he will not long continue to please. Mankind are generally too indolent to relish so much labour: they

may pretend to admire the author's depth, after they have discovered his meaning; but they will seldom be inclined to bestow upon his work a second perusal.

In treating of perspicuity of style, it will be proper, in the first place, to direct our attention to single words and phrases, and afterwards to the construction of

sentences.

Perspicuity, considered with respect to words and phrases, requires the qualities of purity, propriety, and precision. Of these, the first two are often confounded with each other, and indeed they are very nearly allied: a distinction however obtains between them. Purity of style consists in the use of such words, and such constructions as belong to the idiom of the language which we write; in opposition to words and phrases which are imported from other languages, or which are obsolete, or new-coined, or used without proper authority. Pro priety of style consists in the selection of such words, as the best and most established usage has appropriated to those ideas which we employ them to express. It implies the correct and happy application of them, according to that usage, in opposition to vulgarisms, or low expressions, and to words and phrases which would be less significant of the ideas which we intend to convey. Style may be pure, that is, it may be strictly English without Scotticisms or Gallicisms, or ungrammatical and unwarranted expressions of any kind, and may nevertheless be deficient in propriety. The words may be unskilfully chosen, not adapted to the subject, nor fully expressive of the author's sentiments; he may have taken his words and phrases from the general mass of the English language, but his selection may have been injudicious.

Purity may justly be denominated grammatical truth. It consists in the conformity of the expression to the sentiment which the writer intends to convey; as moral truth consists in the conformity of the sentiment intended to be conveyed, to the sentiment actually entertained; and logical truth in the conformity of the sentiment to the nature of things. The opposite to