PROPRIETY OF STYLE.

PROPRIETY of style stands opposed to vulgarisms or low expressions, and to words and phrases that would be less significant of the ideas which we mean to convey. An author may be deficient in propriety by making choice of such words as do not express the idea which he intends, but some other which only resembles it; or such as express that idea, but not fully and completely. He may also be deficient in this respect by making choice of words or phrases, which habit has taught us to regard as mean and vulgar.

All that I propose in relation to this subject, is to collect from the writings of different authors a considerable number of vulgar phrases.

These and many other particulars might easily choke the faith of a philosopher, who believed no more than what he could deduce from the principles of nature.-Dryden's Life of Plutarch.

The kings of Syria and Egypt, the kings of Pergamus and Macedon, without intermission worried each other for above two hundred years.-Burke's Vindication of Natural Society.

Every year a new flower in his judgment beats all the old ones, though it is much inferior to them both in colour and shape.-Mandeville on the Nature of Society.

I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in a quotation.—Addison, Spectator.

Learning and the arts were but then getting up.-Hurd's Dialogues. We enter into their gratitude towards those faithful friends who did not desert them in their difficulties; and we heartily go along with their resentment, against those perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them.-Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.

It was but of a piece, indeed, that a ceremony conducted in defiance of humanity, should be founded in contempt of justice.-Melmoth's Letters of Fitzosborne.

It is well if the reader, without rejecting by the lump, endeavour patiently to gather the plain meaning.-Kames's Elements of Criticism. Eloquence, style, composition, and such like have already been so frequently and so fully treated by various writers, that it seems scarcely justifiable to resume them.-Leland's Dissertations on Eloquence.

Rabelais had too much game given him for satire in that age by the customs of courts and of convents, of processes and of wars, of schools and of camps, of romances and legends.-Temple on Poetry.

One would think there was (were) more sophists than one had a finger in this volume of letters.-Bentley on Socrates's Epistles.

I had as lief say a thing after him as after another.-Lowth's Letter to Warburton.

If all these were exemplary in the conduct of their lives, things would soon take a new face, and religion receive a mighty encouragement.-Swift on the Advancement of Religion.

Nor would he do it to maintain debate, or show his wit, but plainly tell me what stuck with him.-Burnet's Life of Rochester.

It fell out unfortunately that two of these principal persons fell out, and had a fatal quarrel.-Clarendon's Life.

This is worse than the description of the children sliding on the ice, all on a summer day; of whom we are told, "It so fell out that they fell in.

Content, therefore, I am, my lord, that Britain stands in this respect as she now does. Able enough she is at present to shift for herself. Shaftesbury's Letter concerning Design.

What is it but a kind of rack that forces men to say what they have no mind to ?-Cowley's Essays.

Whoever is in the least acquainted with Grecian history must know that their legislator, by the severity of his institutions, formed the Spartans into a robust, hardy, valiant nation, made for war.— Leland's History of Philip.

He therefore made rhyming tragedies, till, by the prevalence of manifest propriety, he seems to have grown ashamed of making them any longer. Johnson's Life of Dryden.

From that time he resolved to make no more translations.—Johnson's Life of Pope.

It is my design to comprise in this short paper, the substance of those numerous dissertations the critics have made on the subject.Pope's Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.

A few reflections on the rise and progress of our distemper, and the rise and progress of our cure, will help us of course to make a true judgment.-Bolingbroke's Dissertation on Parties.

This application of the verb make is somewhat awkward, as well as familiar. To make tragedies, to make translations, to make dissertations, to make judgments, are

expressions which ought very cautiously to be admitted. into a dignified composition.

A vulgar expression, says Longinus, is sometimes. much more significant than an elegant one. This may readily be granted; but however significant it may be, no expression should be used that is below the dignity of the subject treated.

The following quotation will serve to show how the most beautiful descriptions of poetry may be deformed by the introduction of one low or vulgar expression.

"Tis night, dread night, and weary Nature lies
So fast as if she never were to rise;

No breath of wind now whispers thro' the trees,
No noise at land, nor murmur in the seas;
Lean wolves forget to howl at night's pale noon,
No wakeful dogs bark at the silent moon,
Nor bay the ghosts that glide with horror by
To view the caverns where their bodies lie;
The ravens perch, and no presages give,
Nor to the windows of the dying cleave;
The owls forget to scream; no midnight sound
Calls drowsy Echo from the hollow ground;
In vaults the walking fires extinguished lie;

The stars, heaven's sentries, wink, and seem to die.-Lee.

The practice of describing objects and circumstances peculiar to ancient times, by terms characteristic of modern institutions and manners, may safely be classed among the chief improprieties of style. Gavin Douglas, the celebrated bishop of Dunkeld, has exhibited many curious instances of this practice in his Scottish version of the Eneid: the Sibyl, for example, is converted into a nun, and admonishes Æneas, the Trojan baron, to persist in counting his beads. This plan of applying the language of modern life to describe the past, has been adopted by much later writers: many preposterous instances occur in Dr. Blackwell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus; and Dr. Middleton, who, if not a more learned, is certainly a more judicious writer, has in his Life of Cicero been repeatedly betrayed into the same species of affectation. Balbus was general of the artillery to Cæsar; Cicero procured a regiment for

Curtius; Tedius took the body of Clodius into his chaise; Cœlius was a young gentleman of equestrian rank. In the following passage, which is Dr. Doig's translation of a quotation from the scholiast on Pindar, we encounter ladies at a very early period in the history of society; inasmuch as they are found in the very act of discovering the use of petticoats: "The same ladies, too, from a sense of decency, invented garments made of the bark of trees."

PRECISION OF STYLE.

THE third quality which enters into the composition of a perspicuous style, is precision. This implies the retrenching of all superfluity of expression. A precise style exhibits an exact copy of the writer's ideas. To write with precision, though this be properly a quality of style, he must possess a very considerable degree of distinctness in his manner of thinking. Unless his own conceptions be clear and accurate, he cannot convey to the minds of others a clear and accurate knowledge of the subject which he treats.

Looseness of style, which is properly opposed to precision, generally arises from using a superfluity of words. Feeble writers employ a multitude of words to make themselves understood, as they imagine, more distinctly; but, instead of accomplishing this purpose, they only bewilder their readers. They are sensible that they have not caught an expression that will convey their precise meaning; and therefore they endeavour to illustrate it by heaping together a mass of ill-consorted phrases. The image which they endeavour to present to our mind, is confused and inconsistent. When an author speaks of his hero's courage in the day of battle,

the expression is precise, and I understand it fully; but if, for the sake of multiplying words, he should afterwards extol his fortitude, my thoughts immediately begin to waver between those two attributes. In thus endeavouring to express one quality more strongly, he introduces another. Courage resists danger, fortitude supports pain. The occasion of exerting each of those qualities is different: and being led to think of both together when only one of them should be presented to me, I find my view rendered unsteady, and my conception of the hero indistinct.

An author may be very intelligible, without being precise. He uses proper words, and proper arrangements of words; but as his own ideas are loose and general, he cannot express them with any great degree of precision. Few authors in the English language are more easily understood than Archbishop Tillotson and Sir William Temple, yet neither of them can pretend to much precision; they are loose and diffuse, and very often do not select such expressions as are adapted for conveying simply the idea which they have in view.

All subjects do not require to be treated with the same degree of precision. It is requisite that in every species of writing this quality should in some measure be perceptible; but we must at the same time be upon our guard, lest the study of precision, especially in treating subjects which do not rigidly require it, should betray us into a dry and barren style; lest, from the desire of pruning more closely, we retrench all copiousness and ornament. A deficiency of this kind may be remarked in the serious compositions of Swift.

To unite copiousness with precision, to be flowing and graceful, and at the same time correct and exact in the choice of every word, is one of the highest and most difficult attainments in writing. Some species of composition may require more of copiousness and ornament, others more of precision and accuracy; and even the same composition may, in different parts, require a difference of style; but these qualities must never be totally sacrificed to each other.