heavily armed, and march with precision and dignity to the music of their own tramp. They are splendidly equipped, but a nice eye can discern a little rust beneath their fine apparel, and there are suttlers in his camp who lie, cog and talk gross obscenity. Macaulay, brisk, lively, keen and energetic, runs his thoughts rapidly through his sentence, and kicks out of the way every word which obstructs his passage. He reins in his steed only when he has reached his goal, and then does it with such celerity that he is nearly thrown backwards by the suddenness of his stoppage. Gifford's words are moss-troopers, that waylay innocent travellers and murder them for hire. Jeffrey is a fine "lance," with a sort of Arab swiftness in his movement, and runs an iron-clad horseman through the eye before he has had time to close John Wilson's camp is a disorganized mass, who might do effectual service under better discipline, but who under his lead are suffered to carry on a rambling and predatory warfare, and disgrace their general by flagitious excesses. Sometimes they steal, sometimes swear, sometimes drink, and sometimes pray. Swift's words are porcu

his helmet.

pine's quills, which he throws with unerring aim at whoever approaches his lair. All of Ebenezer Elliot's words are gifted with huge fists, to pommel and bruise. Chatham and Mirabeau throw hot shot into their opponents' magazines. Talfourd's forces are orderly and disciplined, and march to the music of the Dorian flute; those of Keats keep time to the tones of the pipe of Phoebus; and the hard, harshfeatured battalions of Maginn are always preceded by a brass band. Hallam's word-infantry can do much execution, when they are not in each other's way. Pope's phrases are either daggers or rapiers. Willis's words are often tipsy with the champaign of the fancy, but even when they reel and stagger they keep the line of grace and beauty, and

though scattered at first by a fierce onset from graver cohorts, soon reunite without wound or loss. John Neal's forces are multitudinous, and fire briskly at every thing. They occupy all the provinces of letters, and are nearly useless from being spread over too much ground. Webster's words are thunderbolts, which sometimes miss the Titans at whom they are hurled, but always leave enduring marks when they strike. Hazlitt's verbal army is sometimes drunk and surly, sometimes foaming with passion, sometimes cool and malignant, but drunk or sober is ever dangerous to cope with. Some of Tom Moore's words are shining dirt, which he flings with excellent aim. This list might be indefinitely extended, and arranged with more regard to merit and chronology. My own words, in this connection, might be compared to a ragged, undisciplined militia, which could be easily routed by a charge of horse, and which are apt to fire into each other's faces.

There is a great amount of critical nonsense talked about style. One prim Aristarchus tells us that no manner of expression is so good as that of Addison; another contends for Carlyle; and both would have words arrayed according to their own models, without regard to individual mental bias or idiosyncracies. If style be good, just in proportion as it enables an author to express his thoughts, it should be shackled by few general rules. Every style formed elaborately on any model, must be affected and strait-laced. Every imitator of Byron and Pope has been damned and forgotten. The nature of a man can only squeak out, when it is hampered by artificial environments. Some thoughts, in a cramped style, look like Venus improved by the addition of busk and bustle. The selection and arrangement of a writer's words should be as characteristic as his ideas and feelings. There is no model style. What is pleasing in the

diction of one author disgusts us in a copyist. If a person admires a particular method of arranging words, that arrangement will occur naturally in his own diction, without malice aforethought. Some writers unconsciously fall into the mode of expression adopted by others. This illustrates a similarity of disposition, and is not imitation. As a style, when it is natural, comes rather from the heart than the head, men of similar tastes and feelings will be likely to fall into a similar form of expression. Leigh Hunt's easy slipshod is pleasant enough to read, as his nature is easy and slipshod; but only think of Carlyle running into that way of writing! Sydney Smith, concise, brisk and brilliant, has a manner of composition which exactly corresponds to those qualities; but how would Lord Bacon look in Smith's sentences? How grandly the soul of Milton rolls and winds through the arches and labyrinths of his involved and magnificent diction, waking musical echoes at every new turn and variation of its progress—but how could the thought of such a light trifler as Cibber travel through so glorious a maze without being lost or crushed in the journey? The plain, manly language of John Locke could hardly be translated into the terminology of Kant-would look out of place in the rapid and sparkling movement of Cousin's periodsand would appear mean in the cadences of Dugald Stewart. Every writer, therefore, is his own standard. The law by which we judge of his sentences must be deduced from his sentences. If we can discover what the man is, we know what his style ought to be. If it indicate his character, it is, relatively, good; if it contradict his character, though its cadences are faultless, it is still bad and not to be endured. To condemn Carlyle and Macaulay because they do not run their thoughts into the moulds of Addison or Burke, is equivalent to condemning a bear because he does not digest

stones like an ostrich, or a chicken, because it goes on two legs instead of four. The alleged faults belong to organization. We may quarrel with a writer if we please, for possessing a bad or tasteless nature, but not with the style, which takes from that nature its form and movement.

It is singular that Macaulay and Carlyle, continually protesting against affectation in the mode of expressing thought, should be themselves considered the high priests at the shrine of affectation. In truth, no writers are less open to the charge. Their styles are exact mirrors of their minds. Any other form of expression, would in them, be gross affectation. When they change their dispositions and modes of thinking, and preserve their way of writing, they will then be justly liable to rebuke, and be justly punished with neglect.

Words have generally been termed the dress of thought. We recollect of hearing a lecturer on elocution give a minute description of the manner in which this singular tailoring of ideas was effected. He appareled an abstract conception of the Intellect in stockings, shirt, trowsers, vest, coat and bright buttons, and showed us those closets and drawers in the brain's chamber, where such articles of clothing were deposited. This notion of words being the dress of thought is indeed curious. Let us suppose a case. An Imagination rises from the soft bed of Ideality, on hearing the tinkle of Master Reason's or Master Volition's bell. Of course it does not desire to appear before company in a state of nudity, and it accordingly trips lightly into the dressingroom of the Noddle, and overhauls the mind's wardrobe. Now this wardrobe in some heads is scanty and poor, in others, overflowing with rich and costly apparel. At any rate our Imagination slips on the most shining and flaring suit of clothes it can find, and then slides along a number

of nerves into the lungs, and sails out of the mouth on a stream of sound, to delight the world with its presence. In the verbal wardrobe of Wordsworth there would be few rich garments: consequently, most of his thoughts or fancies would be compelled to appear in peasants' frocks or suits of "homely russet brown." All of Byron's ideas aspired to appear in regal splendor; and, as they were in the custom of crowding thick and fast into the dressing-room, there must have been some jostling and fighting among them, for the most costly and showy suits. Vice and Falsehood would crave fine apparel as well as Virtue and Truth; and, in his case, they must often have succeeded in bullying the latter out of their rights and "tights." There are a class of authors who have rich garments but no thoughts to put into them. The garments, however, please the eye of the multitude, and few discover that they are stuffed with brass instead of brains. Some poets have nothing but ragged clothes in their wardrobe, and their poor shivering Ideas go sneaking about the alleys of letters, ashamed to be seen by their more richly-dressed relations. Others, though in tatters, have a certain quick impudence, like that of Robert Macaire, which enables them to bustle about among their betters, and seem genteel though in rags. We sometimes observe thoughts in the prim coats and broad hats of quakers; but they are not admitted to the "West End," -excepting, of course, "the West End of the Universe." Sir Charles Sedley was distinguished for writing poems of considerable impurity of idea and considerable purity of language. His biographer therefore is careful to inform us that though the sentiments of Sir Charles were as foul as those of Rochester, they were not so immodest, because they were arrayed in clean linen. Dryden's wardrobe, we are told, was like that of a Russian noble,-" all filth and diamonds,