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Gibbon's notes, according to the present method of printing the book. When a note is announced, you turn to the end of the volume, and there you often find nothing but a reference to an authority. All these authorities ought only to be printed at the margin or the bottom of the page." *

What Mr. Hume here remarks concerning references to authorities, may be extended to those short explanatory sentences, which, being intended to facilitate the reader's progress, should unquestionably be brought under his eye, at the same time with the passage they are intended to elucidate. Dr. Robertson, as well as Mr. Gibbon, seems to have overlooked this distinction between explanatory hints, and notes intended for the gratification of the curious; and hence have arisen (at least in part) those inconveniences in the technical arrangement of his volumes, of which Dr. Douglas was led to complain.

A still more important blemish, however, it must be confessed, than what this respectable correspondent has specified, is sometimes the real source of the imperfection he has remarked; I mean, that a considerable portion of the matter which is parcelled out among the notes, ought to have been incorporated with the text. Where a writer finds it necessary to enter into speculation and discussion, the whole of his argument should undoubtedly be stated at once, and not broken down into fragments, which the reader is to collect from different parts of the book. In those dissertations, therefore, which form so considerable a part both of the History of Charles V. and of America, it would perhaps have been better, if the author had adhered less closely to the plan which he has so judiciously adopted in his historical narrative. The arguments which recommend it in the latter species of composition, it is sufficiently evident, do not apply to it when introduced into the former.

After all, whoever attempts to instruct the world by any literary undertaking, whether historical or speculative, will find it necessary, for the complete satisfaction

* Gibbon's Post. Works, vol. i. p. 500.

of accurate inquiries, to engage in occasional discussions which could not be introduced into the body of the work, without digressions inconsistent with a simple and distinct arrangement; nor compressed into notes at the bottom of the page, without stopping the reader's progress and misleading his attention. No writer has been more completely aware of this than Mr. Hume, who, in all his publications, both historical and philosophical, has distinguished carefully those incidental suggestions which are necessary to prevent any hesitation about the text, from the critical disquisitions useful for satisfying men of curious research, or for obviating the doubts of more refined speculation. Dr. Robertson's subject, in all his histories excepting that of Scotland, engaged him in inquiries more open to controversy, and in arguments resting upon information less accessible to ordinary readers, than those of Mr. Hume. His proofs and illustrations, accordingly, bear a far. greater proportion to the size of his volumes; but I am inclined to think that, if examined with proper attention, the arrangement of them will be found (with a few exceptions) to reflect no less honor on his taste and discernment.

The stress which Dr. Robertson himself laid on this peculiarity in his mode of composition, added to the indecision of Mr. Gibbon with respect to its propriety, will, I hope, apologize sufficiently for the minuteness with which some of the foregoing particulars are stated. The general question concerning the expediency of imitating the ancients, in limiting an author's intercourse with his readers, to what is conveyed in the text, does not seem to me to admit of discussion. Considered as sources of authentic and of accurate information, the value of the classics is infinitely diminished by this very circumstance; and few, I believe, have studied Mr. Smith's works (particularly his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations) without regretting on some occasions, the omission of his authorities; and, on others, the digressions into which he has been led, by conforming so scrupulously to the example of antiquity.

Of Dr. Robertson's merits as an historian, so far as they are connected with the genius of the language in which he wrote, it does not become a native of this part of the island to express a decided opinion. And, accordingly, in the few remarks which I am to hazard on that subject, although I shall state my own judgment with freedom, I would be understood to write with all possible diffidence.

The general strain of his composition is flowing, equal, and majestic; harmonious beyond that of most English writers, yet seldom deviating, in quest of harmony, into inversion, redundancy, or affectation. If, in some passages, it may be thought that the effect might have been heightened by somewhat more of variety in the structure and cadence of his periods, it must be recollected that this criticism involves an encomium on the beauty of his style; for it is only where the ear is habitually gratified, that the rhythm of composition becomes an object of the reader's attention.

In comparing his turn of expression with that of the classical writers of England, a difference may, I think, be perceived; originating in the provincial situation of the country where he received his education and spent his life and, if I am not much mistaken, the same observation may be extended, in a greater or less degree, to most of our contemporaries who have labored under similar disadvantages. I do not allude, at present, to what are commonly called Scotticisms; for, from these Dr. Robertson's works have been allowed, by the most competent judges, to be remarkably free; but to an occasional substitution of general or of circuitous modes of expression, instead of the simple and specific English phrase. An author who lives at a distance from the acknowledged standard of elegance, writes in a dialect different from that in which he is accustomed to speak; and is naturally led to evade, as much as possible, the hazardous use of idiomatical phrases, by the employment of such as accord with the general analogy of the language. Hence, in all the lighter and more familiar kinds of writing, the risk of sacrificing ease and vivacity,

and what Dr. Johnson calls genuine Anglicism,* in order to secure correctness and purity; and hence, the difficulties with which those of our countrymen have had to struggle, who have aimed at the freedom of the epistolary style, or who have attempted to catch the shadowy and fleeting forms of comic dialogue. The peculiarity in the manner of Livy, censured by Asinius Pollio, was probably of a similar description; arising less from an admixture of Paduan idioms than from the absence of such as marked the dialect of Rome. "In Tito Livio," says Quinctilian, "miræ facundiæ viro, putat inesse Pollio Asinius quandam Patavinitatem. Quare, si fieri potest, et verba omnia, et vox, hujus alumnum Urbis oleant; ut oratio Romana planè videatur, non civitate donata." +

If, however, in these and a few other respects, important advantages are possessed by those whose standard of propriety is always before them in their ordinary habits of conversation and of business, it must perhaps be granted, on the other hand, that an ear thus familiarized from infancy to phrases which it has been accustomed to retain, without any selection, or any reference to general principles, can scarcely fail to have some effect in blunting an author's discrimination between the established modes of classical expression and the accidental jargon of the day. Illustrations of this remark might be easily collected from writers of the highest and most deserved reputation; more particularly from some who have cultivated, with the greatest success, the appropriate graces of the English tongue. Even the works of Dr. Middleton, which have been often recommended to Scotchmen as the safest models for their imitation, abound with instances of colloquial language, sanctioned probably by the authority of the fashionable speakers of his time, but which, I should suppose, would now be considered as vulgarisms, by such of his countrymen as have formed their taste on the compositions either of an earlier or of a later period.

*If Addison's language had been less idiomatical, it would have lost something of its genuine Anglicism." Lives of the Poets.

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In guarding against these temporary modes of speech, the provincial residence of a Scotchman may sometimes have its use, by teaching him to distrust his ear as an arbiter of elegance, and to appeal on every questionable point to the practice of those whose established reputation gives the stamp of propriety to the phraseology they have employed. If his composition be deficient in ease, it may be expected not to fall under the ordinary standard in point of purity; nay, it is not impossible, that in his solicitude to avoid idiomatical phrases, he may be occasionally led to animate and ennoble his diction; or, by uncommon and fortunate combinations of words, to give to familiar ideas the charm of novelty.

The species of composition to which Dr. Robertson directed his studies, was peculiarly adapted to his local situation, by affording him an opportunity of displaying all the talents he possessed, without imposing on him a trial of his powers in those kinds of writing where a Scotchman is most likely to fail. In delineating the characters of princes, statesmen, and warriors, or in recording events that have happened on the great theatre of public affairs, a certain elevation of language is naturally inspired by the magnitude of the subject. The engaging and pathetic details of domestic life vanish before the eye which contemplates the fortunes of nations, and the revolutions of empire; and there is even a gravity of manner, exclusive of every thing familiar or flippant, which accords with our idea of him who sits in judgment on the generations that are past. It may, perhaps, be questioned by some whether Dr. Robertson has not carried to an extreme, his idea of what he has himself called the dignity of history; but, whatever opinion we form on this point, it cannot be disputed, that his plan of separating the materials of historical composition from those which fall under the provinces of the antiquary, and of the writer of memoirs, was on the whole happily conceived; and that one great charm of his works arises from the taste and judgment with which he has carried it into execution. Nor has he suffered this scrupulous regard to the unity of historical style to exclude that variety which was necessary

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