[ S' ] 



inftance of corrednefs and elegance in profe, as well as of harmony 

 and fire in poetry. His Prefaces and his Critical Effays are written 



in 



On the power of charity he obferves that this virtue, " if it have the reins given to it, 

 will run aivay with tht rider" This is burlefque, and he is not much fhort of it when 

 he tells us, that " God has twifted our duty and our intereft together," and that the 

 other virtues " ftand on their own bottom." 



" Charity is the queen of virtues ; the reft are in her train and retinue, as it were, 

 " conllantly attending her, appearing and difappeari/ig." Another inftance of fuperfiuous 

 words, over-wrought metaphor, and of a heavy adjedtion clogging the fentence. 



In his fermon on the Unity, Tillotfon talks of the Sun, as " the moft worjhipful of 

 all fenfible beings," as if he wiflied to raife a ludicrous idea in the mind rather than 

 to exhibit that luminary " as the eye and foul of this great world." Of the heroes 

 he fays, that " for their great and worthy deeds, when they lived upon earth, they were 

 " diftinguiflied by pofthumous honours." But it would be fuperfiuous to dwell on 

 fuch paflages as thefe while one can find fuch a fentence as the following, which 

 concenters in itfelf almoft all the errors with which we have charged the ftyle of 88. 



" One cannot deny the frame of this world which htfees with his eyes, though from 

 " thence it will follow that either that or fomething elfe muft be of itfelf; which yet, as 

 " I faid before, is a thing which no man can comprehend how it can be." In this fen- 

 tence it is difficult to coUedl: to what antecedent thence is referred ; it can properly 

 refer only to the preceding propofition " one cannot deny the frame, &c." and refer- 

 ring to that the conclufion will not follow ; it muft therefore refer to " frame," and 

 the conneclion in that cafe will be obfcure and illogical. " Which yet, as I faid before, 

 is a thing, &c." Here we find, after two or three readings, that the relative which is 

 connefted with the lajl claiife of the preceding member of the fentence as an antecedent, 

 and the propofition, contained in that claufe, is called a thing ; the latter which is 

 a relative to this thing, that is to the foregoing which — that is to the propofition in the 

 laft claufe of thefirft member of the fentence ; and this latter which ftands without any 

 verb, for the claufe " how it can be" ftands as the objeftive cafe to " no man can com- 

 " prehend." Such a fentence feems the ne ultra of loofe, confufed and negligent ftyle. 



From Tillotfon we fliall give but two other examples — the firft to illuftrate the 

 inartificial manner in which he divided his fentences ; the other, from his difcourfe on 

 the difficulty of reforming vicious habits, to prove how extremely attached he, as well 

 his contemporaries, was to the practice of giving to every word a fellow. 



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