LETTERS AND ESSAYS,

&c. &c.

TO THE REV. JOHN FELL.

London, 2nd February, 1784.

You will receive, in this and another frank, my preface to your Grammar, which I hope you will approve. If you do so, pray be good enough to return it by the coach; for the book itself is already printed; and, as you well know, by sad experience, the Devil is a most importunate Dun.

The sentiments I am sure you will not dislike; but I am far from satisfied with the expression, and I must beg you to have no mercy.

Our common object is to do the best we can towards preventing the style of the next race of authors from

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being tainted by the pedantry of the present. Indeed Johnsonism is now become almost a general disease.

In the lighter kinds of writing this affectation is particularly disagreeable; and I am convinced that in the gravest, aye! and in the sublimest passages, the simple terms and the idioms of our language often add a grace beyond the reach of scholarship, increasing, rather than diminishing, the elegance, as well as the spirit of the diction.

"Utinam et verba in usu quotidiano posita minùs "timeremus."

"He that would write well," says Roger Ascham, "must follow the advice of Aristotle, to speak as the "common people speak and to think as the wise think."

In support of this opinion many of the examples cited by you are amusing, as well as convincing. The following from a great author may be added—

"Is there a God to swear by, and is there none to "believe in, none to trust to ?"

What becomes of the force and simplicity of this short sentence, when turned into the clumsy English which schoolmasters indite and which little boys can construe? "Is there a God by whom to swear, and is there

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none in whom to believe, none to whom to pray?"

The Doctor is a great writer and is deservedly admired, but he should not be imitated.-His gigantic strength may perhaps require a vocabulary that would encumber feebler thoughts: but it is very comical to see Mr. B. and Dr. P. strutting about in Johnson's bulky clothes as if a couple of Lilliputians had bought their great coats at a rag-fair in Brobdignag.

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Cowley, Dryden, Congreve, and Addison are our best examples; for Middleton is not free from Gallicisms. Mr. Burke's speeches and pamphlets (although the style is too undisciplined for a model) abound with phrases in which homeliness sets off elegance and ease adds grace to strength.

How your neighbour, the "dilectus Iapis" will smile to hear Milton's practice appealed to! Yet what can he say to the following specimens, taken at random while I am now writing?

“Am I not sung and proverb'd for a fool
"In every street ? Do they hot say how well
"Are come upon him his deserts ?"

"Here rather let me drudge and earn my bread."

"Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake

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My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint.

"At distance I forgive thee-go with that."

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"Abortive as the first-born bloom of spring
Nipt with the lagging rear of winter's frost."
"I was all ear,

"And took in strains that might create a soul

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"So! farewell hope; but with hope farewell fear,
"Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;
"Evil be thou my good."

Shakespeare I need not quote, for he never writes ill, excepting when he means to be very fine, and very learned.

Fortunately our admirable translation of the Scriptures abounds with these native terms of expression, and it is admitted to be almost as pure an authority for English as for doctrine.

I begin, already, to look forward to my annual week's holiday at Thaxted, where I shall hear you expound them for both purposes.

ON ENGLISH STYLE.*

DURING the last thirty or forty years, English literature has been enriched with many valuable compositions in prose and in verse. Many wise and learned men have made use of our language in communicating their sentiments concerning all the important branches of science and art. All kinds of subjects have been skilfully treated in it, and many works of taste and genius have been written with great and well-deserved success: yet perhaps it will appear, upon a careful view of these compositions, that whatsoever credit their authors are entitled to, for acuteness of understanding, strength of imagination, delicacy of taste, or energy of passion; there are but few of them that deserve the praise of having expressed themselves in a pure and genuine strain of English. In general they have preferred such a choice, and arrangement of words, as an early acquaintance with some other language, and the neglected study of their

*Printed in 1784 as the Preface to an Grammar."

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Essay on English