beauty, where the face is clear and plain as to symmetry and proportion, but is capable of wonderful improvements as to features and complexion. If I may transgress in too frequent allusions, because I would make every thing plain to you, I would pass on from painters to statuaries, whose excellence it is at first to form true and just proportions, and afterwards to give them that softness, that expression, that strength and delicacy, which make them almost breathe and live. The decorations of style are formed out of those several schemes and figures, which are contrived to express the passions and motions of our minds in our speech; to give life and ornament, grace and beauty, to our expressions. I shall not undertake the rhetorician's province, in giving you an account of all the figures they have invented, and those several ornaments of writing, whose grace and commendation lie in being used with judgment and propriety. It were endless to pursue this subject through all the schemes and illustrations of speech: but there are some common forms, which every writer upon every subject may use, to enliven and adorn his work. These are metaphor and similitude: and those images and representations, that are drawn in the strongest and most lively colours, to imprint what the writer would have his readers conceive, more deeply on their minds. In the choice, and in the use of these, your ordinary writers are most apt to offend. Images are very sparingly to be introduced: their proper place is in poems and orations; and their use is to move pity or terror, admiration, compassion, anger, and resentment, by representing something very affectionate or very dreadful, very astonishing, very miserable, or very provoking, to our thoughts. They give a wonderful force and beauty to the subject, where they are painted by a masterly hand; but if they are either weakly drawn, or unskilfully placed, they raise no passion but indignation in the reader. Felton. § 97. On Metaphors and Similitudes. The most common ornaments are Metaphor and Similitude. One is an allusion to words, the other to things; and both have their beauties, if properly applied. Similitudes ought to be drawn from the most familiar and best known particulars in the world: if any thing is dark and obscure in them, the purpose of using them is defeated; and that which is not clear itself, can never give light to any thing that wants it. It is the idle fancy of some poor brains, to run out perpetually into a course of similitudes, confounding their subject by the multitude of likenesses; and making it like so many things, that it is like nothing at all. This trifling humour is good for nothing, but to convince us, that the author is in the dark himself; and while he is likening his subject to every thing, he knoweth not what it is like. There is another tedious fault in some simile men which is, drawing their com parisons into a great length and minute particulars, where it is of no importance whether the resemblance holds or not. But the true art of illustrating any subject by similitude, is, first to pitch on such a resemblance as all the world will agree in : and then, without being careful to have it run on all four, to touch it only in the strongest lines, and the nearest likeness. And this will secure us from all stiffness and formality in similitude, and deliver us from the nauseous repetition of as and so, which some so-so writers, if I may beg leave to call them so, are continually sounding in our ears. I have nothing to say to those gentlemen who bring similitudes and forget the resemblance. All the pleasure we can take when we meet these promising sparks, is in the disappointment, where we find their fancy is so like their subject, that it is not like at all. $98. On Metaphors. Ibid. Metaphors require great judgment and consideration in the use of them. They are a shorter similitude, where the likeness is rather implied than expressed. The signification of one word, in metaphors, is transferred to another, and we talk of one thing in the terms and propriety of another. But there must be a common resemblance, some original likeness in nature, some correspondence and easy transition, or metaphors are shocking and confused. The beauty of them displays itself in their easiness and propriety, where they are naturally introduced; but where they are forced and crowded, too frequent and various, and do not rise out of the course of thought, but are constrained and pressed into the service, instead of making the dis course course more lively and cheerful, they make it sullen, dull, and gloomy. You must form your judgment upon the best models and the most celebrated pens, where you will find the metaphor in all its grace and strength, shedding a lustre and beauty on the work. For it ought never to be used but when it gives greater force to the sentence, an illustration to the thought, and insinuates a silent argument in the allusion. The use of metaphors is not only to convey the thought in a more pleasing manner, but to give it a stronger impression, and enforce it on the mind. Where this is not regarded, they are vain and trifling trash; and in a due observance of this, in a pure, chaste, natural expression, consist the justness, beauty, and delicacy of style. 99. On Epithets. Felton. I have said nothing of Epithets. Their business is to express the nature of the things they are applied to; and the choice of them depends upon a good judgment, to distinguish what are the most proper titles to be given on all occasions, and a complete knowledge in the accidents, qualities, and affections of every thing in the world. They are of most ornament when they are of use: they are to determine the character of every person, and decide the merits of every cause; conscience and justice are to be regarded, and great skill and exactness are required in the use of them. For it is of great importance to call things by their right names: the points of satire, and strains of compliment depend upon it: otherwise we may make an ass of a lion, commend a man in satire, and lampoon him in panegyric. Here also there is room for genius: common justice and judgment should direct us to say what is proper at least; but it is parts and fire that will prompt us to the most lively and most forcible epithets that can be applied; and 'tis in their energy and propriet their beauty lies. Ibid. $100. On Allegories. Allegories I need not mention, because they are not so much any ornament of style, as an artful way of recommending truth to the world in a borrowed shape, and a dress more agreeable to the fancy, than naked truth herself can be. Truth is ever most beautiful and evident in her native dress and the arts that are used to convey her to our minds, are no argu ment that she is deficient, but so many testimonies of the corruption of our nature, when truth, of all things the plainest and sincerest, is forced to gain admittance to us in disguise, and court us in masquerade. Ibid. 101. On the Sublime. There is one ingredient more required to the perfection of style, which I have partly mentioned already, in speaking of the suitableness of the thoughts to the subject, and of the words to the thoughts; but you will give me leave to consider it in another light, with regard to the majesty and dignity of the subject. It is fit, as we have said already, that the thoughts and expressions should be suited to the matter on all occasions; but in nobler and greater subjects, especially where the theme is sacred and divine, it must be our care to think and write up to the dignity and majesty of the things we presume to treat of: nothing little, mean, or low, no childish thoughts, or boyish expressions, will be endured: all must be awful and grave, and great and solemn. The noblest sentiments must be conveyed in the weightiest words: all ornaments and illustrations must be borrowed from the richest parts of universal nature; and in divine subjects, especially when we attempt to speak of God, of his wisdom, goodness, and power, of his mercy and justice, of his dispensations and providence (by all which he is pleased to manifest himself to the sons of men) we must raise search all the treasures of knowledge for our thoughts, and enlarge our minds, and every thing that is great, wonderful, and magnificent: we can only express our thoughts of the Creator in the works of his creation; and the brightest of these can only give us some faint shadows of his greatness and his glory. The strongest figures are too weak, the most exalted language too low, to express his ineffable excellence. No hyperbole can be brought to heighten our thoughts; for in so sublime a theme, nothing can be hyperbolical. The riches of imagination are poor, and all the rivers of eloquence are dry, in supplying thought on an infinite subject. How poor and ean, how base and grovelling, are the Heathen conceptions of the Deity! something sublime and noble must needs be said on so great an occasion; but in this great article, the most celebrated of the Heathen pens seem to flag and and sink; they bear up in no proportion to the dignity of the theme, as if they were depressed by the weight, and dazzled with the splendour of the subject. We have no instances to produce of any writers that rise at all to the majesty and dignity of the Divine Attributes except the sacred penmen. No less than Divine Inspiration could enable men to write worthily of God, and none but the Spirit of God knew how to express his greatness, and display his glory: in comparison of these divine writers, the greatest geniuses, the noblest wits of the Heathen world, are low and dull. The sublime majesty and royal magnificence of the scripture poems are above the reach and beyond the power of all mortal wit. Take the best and liveliest poems of antiquity, and read them as we do the scriptures, in a prose translation, and they are flat and poor. Horace, and Virgil, and Homer, lose their spirits and their strength in the transfusion, to that degree, that we have hardly patience to read them. But the sacred writings, even in our translation, preserve their majesty and their glory, and very far surpass the brightest and noblest compositions of Greece and Rome. And this is not owing to the richness and solemnity of the eastern eloquence (for it holds in no other instance) but to the divine direction and assistance of the holy writers. For, let me only make this remark, that the most literal translation of the scriptures, in the most natural signification of the words, is generally the best; and the same punctualness, which debases other writings, preserves the spirit and majesty of the sacred text: it can suffer no improvement from human wit; and we may observe that those who have presumed to heighten the expressions by a poetical translation or paraphrase, have sunk in the attempt; and all the decorations of their verse, whether Greek or Latin, have not been able to reach the dignity, the majesty, and solemnity of our prose: so that the prose of scripture cannot be improved by verse, and even the divine poetry is most like itself in prose. One observation more I would leave with you: Milton himself, as great a genius as he was, owes his superiority over Homer and Virgil, in majesty of thought and splendour of expression, to the scriptures; they are the fountain from which he derived his light; the sacred treasure that enriched his fancy, and furnished him with all the truth and wonders of God and his crea tion, of angels and men, which no mortal brain was able either to discover or conceive: and in him, of all human writers, you will meet all his sentiments and words raised and suited to the greatness and dig. nity of the subject. I have detained you the longer on this majesty of style, being perhaps myself carried away with the greatness and pleasure of the contemplation. What I have dwelt so much on with respect to divine subjects, is more easily to be observed with reference to human: for in all things below divinity, we are rather able to exceed than fall short; and in adorning all other subjects, our words and sentiments may rise in a just proportion to them: nothing is above the reach of man, but heaven; and the same wit can raise a human subject, Felton. that only debases a divine. § 102. Rules of Order and Proportion. After all these excellencies of style, in purity, in plainness and perspicuity, in or nament and majesty, are considered, a finished piece of what kind soever must shine in the order and proportion of the whole; for light rises out of order, and beauty from proportion. In architecture and painting, these fill and relieve the eye. A just disposition gives us a clear view of the whole at once; and the due symmetry and proportion of every part of itself, and of all together, leave no vacancy in our thoughts or eyes; nothing is wanting, every thing is complete, and we are satis. fied in beholding. But when I speak of order and propor tion, I do not intend any stiff and formal distribution of method, but only a proper the parts in general, where they follow in a natural course, and are not confounded with one another. Laying down a scheme, and marking out the divisions and subdivisions of a discourse, are only necessary in systems, and some pieces of controversy and argumentation: you see, however, that I have ventured to write without any declared order; and this is allowable where the method opens as you read, and the order discovers itself in the progress of the subject; but certainly, of all pieces that were ever written in a professed and stated method, and distinguished by the number and succession of their parts, our English sermons are the completest in or der and proportion; the method is so easy and natural, the parts bear so just a proportion to one another, that among many others, others, this may pass for a peculiar com- A prescribed method is necessary for weaker heads, but the beauty of order is its freedom and unconstraint: it must be dispersed and shine in all the parts through the whole performance; but there is no necessity of writing in trammels, when we can move more at ease without them: neither is the proportion of writing to be measured out like the proportions of a horse, where every part must be drawn in the minutest respect to the size and bigness of but it is to be taken by the mind, and formed upon a general view and consideration of the whole. The statuary that carves Hercules in stone, or casts him in brass, may be obliged to take his dimensions from his foot; but the poet that describes him is not bound up to the geometer's rule: nor is an author under any obligation to write by the scale. the rest ; These hints will serve to give you some notion of order and proportion: and I must not dwell too long upon them, lest I transgress the rules I am laying down. Felton. $103. A Recapitulation. I shall make no formal recapitulation of what I have delivered. Out of all these rules together, rises a just style, and a perfect composition. All the latitude that can be admitted, is in the ornament of writing; we do not require every author to shine in gold and jewels; there is a moderation to be used in the pomp and trappings of a discourse: it is not necessary that every part should be embellished and adorned; but the decoration should be skilfully distributed through the whole: too full and glaring a light is offensive, and confounds the eyes: in heaven itself there are vacancies and spaces between the stars; and the day is not less beautiful for being interspersed with clouds; they only moderate the brightness of the sun, and, without di minishing from his splendour, gild and adorn themselves with his rays. But to descend from the skies: It is in writing as in dress; the richest habits are not always the completest, and a gentleman may make a better figure in a plain suit, than in an embroidered coat; the dress depends upon the imagination, but must be adjusted by the judgment, contrary to the opinion of the ladies, who value nothing but a good fancy in the choice of their clothes. The first excellence is to write in purity, plainly, and clearly; there is no dispensation from these: but afterwards you have your choice of colours, and may enliven, adorn, and paint your subject as you please. In writing, the rules have a relation and dependence on one another. They are held in one social bond, and joined, like the moral virtues and liberal arts, in a sort of harmony and concord. He that cannot write pure, plain English, must never pretend to write at all; it is in vain for him to dress and adorn his discourse; the finer he endeavours to make it, he makes it only the more ridiculous. And on the other side, let a man write in the exactest purity and propriety of language, if he has not life and fire, to give his work some force and spirit, it is nothing but a mere corpse, and a lumpish, unwieldy mass of matter. But every true genius, who is perfect master of the language he writes in, will let no fitting ornaments and decorations be wanting. His fancy flows in the richest vein, and gives his pieces such lively colours, and so beautiful a complexion, that you would almost say his own blood and spirits were transfused into the work. Ibid. 104. How to form a right Taste. A perfect mastery and elegance of style is to be learned from the common rules, but must be improved by reading the orators, and poets, and the celebrated masters in every kind; this will give you a right taste, and a true relish; and when you can distinguish the beauties of every finished piece, you will write yourself with equal commendation. I do not assert that every good writer must have a genius for poetry; I know Tully is an undeniable exception: but I will venture to affirm, that a soul that is not moved with poetry, and has no taste that way, is too dull and lumpish ever to write with any prospect of being read. It is a fatal mistake, and simple superstition, to to discourage youth from poetry, and endeavour to prejudice them against it; if they are of a poetical genius, there is no restraining them: Ovid, you know, was deaf to his father's frequent admonitions. But if they are not quite smitten and bewitched with love of verse, they should be trained to it, to make them masters of every kind of poetry, that by learning to imitate the originals, they may arrive at a right conception and a true taste of their authors: and being able to write in verse upon occasion, I can assure you, is no disadvantage to prose for without relishing the one, a man must never pretend to any taste for the other. Taste is a metaphor, borrowed from the palate, by which we approve or dislike what we eat and drink, from the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the relish in our mouth. Nature directs us in the common use, and every body can tell sweet from bitter, what is sharp, or sour, or vapid, or nauseous; but it requires senses more refined and exercised, to discover every taste that is more perfect in its kind; every palate is not to judge of that, and yet drinking is more used than reading. All that I pretend to know of the matter, is, that wine should be, like a style, clear, deep, bright, and strong, sincere and pure, sound and dry, (as our advertisements do well express it) which last is a commendable term, that contains the juice of the richest spirits, and only keeps out all cold and dampness. It is common to commend a man for an ear to music, and a taste of painting: which are nothing but a just discernment of what is excellent and most perfect in them. The first depends entirely on the ear; a man can never expect to be a master, that has not an ear tuned and set to music; and you can no more sing an ode without an ear, than without a genius you can write one. Painting, we should think, requires some understanding in the art, and exact knowledge of the best master's manner, to be a judge of it; but this faculty, like the rest, is founded in nature: knowledge in the art, and frequent conversation with the best originals, will certainly perfect a man's judgment; but if there is not a natural sagacity and aptness, experience will be of no great service. A good taste is an argument of a great soul, as well as a lively wit. It is the infirmity of poor spirits to be taken with every appearance, and dazzled by every thing that sparkles: but to pass by what the generality of the world admires, and to be detained with nothing but what is most per fect and excellent in its kind, speaks a superior genius, and a true discernment; a new picture by some meaner hand, where the colours are fresh and lively, will engage the eye, but the pleasure goes off with looking, and what we ran to at first with eager ness, we presently leave with indifference: but the old pieces of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Tintoret, and Titian, though not so inviting at first, open to the eye by degrees; and the longer and oftener we look, we still discover new beauties, and find new pleasure. I am not a man of so much severity in my temper as to allow you to be pleased with nothing but what is in the last perfec tion; for then, possibly, so many are the infirmities of writing, beyond other arts, you could never be pleased. There is a wide difference in being nice to judge of every degree of perfection, and rigid in refusing whatever is deficient in any point. This would only be weakness of stomach, not any commendation of a good palate; a true taste judges of defects as well as perfections, and the best judges are always the persons of the greatest candour. They will find none but real faults, and whatever they commend, the praise is justly due. I have intimated already, that a good taste is to be formed by reading the best authors: and when you shall be able to point out their beauties, to discern the brightest passages, the strength and ele gance of their language, you will always write yourself, and read others, by that standard, and must therefore necessarily Felton. excel. § 105. Taste to be improved by Imitation. In Rome there were some popular orators, who, with a false eloquence and violent action, carried away the applause of the people: and with us we have some popular men, who are followed and admired for the loudness of their voice, and a false pathos both in utterance and wri ting. I have been sometimes in some confusion to hear such persons commended by those of superior sense, who could distin guish, one would think, between empty, pompous, specious harangues, and those pieces in which all the beauties of writing are combined. A natural taste must there fore be improved, like fine parts, and a great genius; it must be assisted by art, of it will be easily vitiated and corrupted. False eloquence passes only where true is |