or specious glitter. The words should be vernacular, as far as possible, and seldom such as are removed from familiar use, yet not degenerating into those that are colloquial. The employment of all figurative modes of composition is hostile to simplicity, which aims, or should aim, at communicating ideas with easy and unconstrained elegance.

Harmony in writing results partly from the practice of these methods, and partly from the influence of a correct ear, to which the slightest dissonance is offensive. To effect an harmonious style, much attention must be paid to the disposition of the sentences: they must neither be broken with uniform brevity, nor expanded into tedious prolixity; a skilful intermixture is what should be attempted. Nor, if we would write harmoniously, must we disdain to watch the position even of single words, according to which it will greatly depend whether a sentence reads with graceful fluency, or halts upon the tongue with an irregularity of cadence. Minute as these things may appear, they must not be beneath his attention who aims at producing an harmonious style.

In all these requisites, I know no English writer who has approached nearer to the perfection of them than Goldsmith. Of him alone, perhaps, it may be said, that his style is harmonious without affectation, easy without weakness, and perspicuous without vulgarity. My opinion of his dic

tion I have given on a recent occasion*, and will repeat it here, if an author may be allowed to quote from himself; of which, however, the practice of the age gives precedent.

"In the structure of his sentences he has greater harmony, and greater variety than Addison. In his language he is more scrupulous. He does not offend so often by colloquial phrases or obsolete combinations. His prose is not so feeble, nor so coldly regular. In felicity of expression, when intended to convey a plain and simple idea, or a natural emotion of common minds, he is, perhaps, unequalled.

"A very conspicuous merit of Goldsmith's prose is the lucid arrangement of his sentences.Every word and every period appear to be just where they ought to be. We have no evidence that he composed slowly, or that he laboured much to correct what he had once written: and such perspicuity of arrangement is, therefore, the more remarkable in a man whose ideas in conversation were so perplexed and so confused.

"Harmony, simplicity, clearness, and propriety, in relation to the matter, are the predominant qualities of Goldsmith's general style; but as he was also capable of elevation, I may add to the above, occasional dignity and energy of language.

* In "The Contemplatist : a series of Essays upon Morals and Literature." 1810,

As a model to be studied, I should prefer it to Addison's, for it is more pure.

How remote Cumberland's practice was from his own opinion, let me now proceed to shew. I shall not enter into minute illustrations of his errors, but select such as will testify for themselves.

I have already mentioned the singularly involved paragraph with which the Observer commences, and which certainly ought not to have been found in the pages of a writer who aspired to harmony and perspicuity of style. Nor ought the following to belong to him who believed that he wrote with purity and simplicity.

"I am anxious that I may neither make my first advances with the stiff grimace of a dancingmaster, nor with the too familiar air of a self-important." (No. 1.)

To the introduction of new terms, when unnecessary, every lover of the language should oppose himself. If all writers are to be allowed that capricious innovation, where will the influx stop, and when will the language be fixed? Our dictionaries, like our almanacks, must be annual, while this laxity is tolerated.

"Several of our diurnal essayists have contrived, under the veil of fiction, to hook in something recommendatory of themselves." (No. 3.)

"I was the more disgusted,

when I perceived

that by the nonsensical zigzaggery of the road, &c." (No. 4.)

Are these the phrases of a man distinguished for simplicity and harmony of style?

In the following sentence the word tawdry is employed as synonimous with meretricious; a sense which it has not in any writer whom I should regard as an authority, but one in which Cumberland frequently employs it.

"I mean trials for adultery, the publishers of which are not content with setting down every thing verbatim from their short-hand records, which the scrutinizing necessity of law draws out by pointed interrogatory, but they are also made to allure the curiosity of the passenger by tawdry engravings, in which the heroine of the tale is displayed in effigy, and the most indecent scene of her amours selected as an eye-trap to attract the youth of both sexes; and by debauching the morals of the rising generation, keep up the stock in trade, and feed the market with fresh cases for the commons, and fresh supplies for the retailers of indecency."

I have extracted the whole of this passage, because the censure which it conveys is as applicable now, as it could possibly have been when Cumberland wrote it. I fear, indeed, it is more so. No man can walk the streets of this metropolis without shuddering as he beholds the violation of public decency and morals in those wretches

who earn a disgraceful livelihood by publishing circumstantial accounts of all trials that relate to the most abhorred of human crimes. Nay, they are not satisfied with such opportunities as the present guilt of individuals affords; they rummage into the records of adultery and vice-they drag to light the forgotten memorials of past infamy-they decorate them with flagitious ornaments-and they expose them to sale with a daring contempt of all decorum. Their transgressions continue without reproof or punishment, and our wives and daughtes are polluted by the readiest channel of contanation, as they walk along the public streets; ignorant are initiated into depravity; and the unwary are seduced to the consciousness of offences which, from knowing, they soon learn perhaps to perpetrate.

O proceres censore opus est, an haruspice nobis?

We have among us a self-constituted society, who have distinguished themselves by many encroachments upon the humbler comforts of the poor, without daring to attack the strong holds of the rich they have excited very general indignation and contempt by the fanatic zeal with which they seek to oppress the unresisting, and drag petty delinquents to the bar of justice, while their sanctity of heart does not rouse them to arrest the career of haughty and patrician vice; they have visited, with their terrors, the barber's shop and the