128 Character and Merits of 



istic ; a sedate gi-acefulness and manly simplicity in the move 

 level passages, and a mild majesty and considerate enthusiasm 

 where he rises above them, of which we scarcely know whjere to 

 find any other example. There is great equability, too, and sus- 

 tained force in every part of his writings. He never exhausts 

 himself in flashes and epigrams, nor languishes into tameness or 

 insipidity ; at first sight you would say that plainness and good 

 sense were the predominating good qualities ; but, by and by, 

 this simplicity is enriched with the delicate and vivid colours of a 

 fine imagination ; the free and forcible touches of a most power- 

 ful intellect; and the lights and shades of an unerring and har- 

 monizing taste. In comparing it with the styles of his most ce- 

 lebrated contemporaries, we would say that it was more 

 purely and peculiarly a written style, and therefore rejected 

 those ornaments that more properly belong to oratory. It had 

 no impetuosity, hurry, or vehemence — no bursts or sudden 

 turns or abruptions, like that of Burke ; and though eminently 

 smooth and melodious, it was not modulated to an uniform 

 System of solemn declamation, like that of Johnson, nor spread 

 out in the richer and more voluminous elocution of Stewart; 

 nor still less broken into the patch-work of scholastic pedantry 

 and conversational smartness which has found its admirers in 

 Gibbon, It is a style, in short, of great freedom, force, and 

 beauty; but the deliberate style of a man of thought and of learn- 

 ing ; and neither that of a wit throwing out his extempores with 

 an affectation of careless grace, or of a rhetorician, thinking 

 more of his manner than his matter, and determined to be 

 admired for his expression, whatever may be the fate of his sen- 

 timents. 



His habits of composition, as we have understood, were not, 

 perhaps, exactly what might have been expected from their 

 results. He wrote rather slowly, and his first sketches were 

 often very slight and imperfect, like the rude chalking of a 

 masterly picture. His chief effort and greatest pleasure were in 

 their rcvisal and correction ; and there were no limits to the im- 

 provement which resulted from this application^ It was not the 

 style merely, or indeed chiefly, that gained by it. The whole 



