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, harsh-featured 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 champagne 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 reünite without wound or loss. John Neal's forces are multitudinous, and fire briskly at everything. 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 malig nant; 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 idiosyncrasies. 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 occasionally 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, wak

ing 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 periods — and 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 ward

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, dirty linen, and inestimable sables." To such speculations and fancies as these are we led, when we acknowledge the truth of the maxim, that words are the dress of thought.

Words, however, even in the common meaning, are not, when used by a master-mind, the mere dress of thought. Such a definition degrades them below their sphere, and misconceives their importance. They are, as Wordsworth has happily said, the incarnation of thought. They bear the same relation to ideas, that the