But soft, beneath yon tam'rind shade, Now let the hero's limbs be laid; Sweet slumbers bless the brave: There shall the breezes shed perfume, Nor livid lightnings blast the bloom That decks Mahali's grave. No. CLVII. Quales et quantos viros! Men indeed of eminence and of high attainments. GIBBON is by no means a favourite author with me. His style, which you seem to admire, appears to me the very reverse of what I should most esteem in an historian. The first requisite in historic skill, is perspicuity; and in this particular, no historian I ever read, not even Tacitus himself, is so defective as Gibbon. His expressions are quaint, and studiously inverted; and he is at so much pains to avoid colloquial phrases, that we find a perpetual strain to produce something new and more elevated than any one else, that renders it often difficult to understand what he would say, even when narrating the most common occurrences. The same train of ideas seems to have influenced his mind in the choice of incidents, and in the manner of introducing them to the notice of his reader. Every thing is unnatural and inverted. Digressions are introduced within di, gressions, which perpetually distract the mind of the young inquirer. He feels himself intro duced, as it were, into an enchanted palace, involved in a blaze of torch-light, which, reflected in various ways from concealed mirrors, present before him all at once a multiplicity of objects with which he is entirely unacquainted; gorgeous in the extreme, indeed, but moving past with such velocity, that his senses are confounded. He contemplates the whole as a most brilliant magical exhibition, which is enchanting for the present; but which, when gone, leaves nothing but an indistinct remembrance of gaudy objects, which he can never again recognise in the scenes of nature. No writer, in any language, seems to me so improper to be put into the hands of youth, as Gibbon; were it merely because this manner of writing tends to corrupt the taste, by encouraging a propensity, which is but 'too natural to youth to admire, a superfluity of ornament. But when we likewise consider that he has a perpetual tendency to make indirect attacks upon religion, which ought not to be introduced in this light manner into historical compositions, as well as to introduce philosophical disquisitions, which can neither be in this manner explained nor understood; his history, therefore, appears to me to be a work highly exceptionable; and for young and uninformed minds, exceedingly im. proper. It gives them a slight smattering of many things that they cannot thoroughly understand; makes them petulant and assuming, and ever upon the catch to display the brilliancy of their talents, than which nothing can be more disgusting. STUART.Gilbert, like most of those who have gone before, possessed talents of no ordinary sort; but, like them also, his writings have great defects which detract much from their merit. As an historian, no reliance can be had upon him. The violence of his prejudices against living authors, led him perpetually astray. The object with him seems rather to have been to prove, that those he disliked had gone wrong, than to be right himself; and the quickness of his talents enabled him to do this with a wondrous degree of facility. As his knowledge of mankind, too, was chiefly confined to those of the most dissolute class, his ideas were gross, and often expressed with little delicacy. His style is therefore characterised, when he wrote without affectation, as being nervous rather than elegant; but in the last pieces he wrote, it was affected and unnatural in the extreme, and so full of Gallicisms, that it may be called Frenchified English. It was a wretched model to copy; but having seen Johnson and Gib bon, each attain a high degree of celebrity, by adopting a style equally unnatural and barbarous, he seems to have aimed at obtaining fame in the same way. As far as his influence goes, I, therefore, consider him as one of the corruptors of good taste in English composition, and of course unfit to be put into the hands of youth, should there be no other objection to his writings; of which, in truth, there are but too many. How often have we occasion to regret, in the course of this survey, that great talents should be prostituted to such unworthy uses! Perhaps it is more difficult to acquire an easy unaffected natural style in writing, than any other; and when it is acquired, it affords more pleasure to the attentive reader than any other, it excites less enthusiastic admiration, than that turgid, unnatural, and affected mode of writing I have so often had occasion to reprehend. Of all the writers already named, Franklin is, in this respect, the purest; Hume and Robertson follow after. The others I wish not more to name, because I could not do it without expressions of high disgust. But if you wish to see the natural style in the highest perfection, read the works of the late Dr. John Gregory; all of which possess that |