1825. 
And yet, it isin the guest of these very 
requisites that the danger of the writer 
for hasty and unrevised publication, and, 
not unfrequently, of the more elaborate 
composer, principally consists :—elabo- 
ration itself—nay, the very act (the dila- 
tory act) of writing, necessarily throwing 
obstructions in the way of that union 
of thought and feeling and modulation, 
upon which, nevertheless, the excellence 
of all composition must ultimately de- 
pend. t 
In actually spontaneous speech, when 
the feelings are excited, and the imagina- 
tion warmed, the language and the mo- 
dulation are the unsought results of this 
excitement. The metaphorical language, 
when it occurs, is but the emanation of 
the image existing in the mind; which 
comes, like the reflection on the mirror, 
not because it is called, but because the 
object is present whose hues and propor- 
tions it represents. By the same law of 
nature, the language itself, in all high ex- 
citement, flows in expressive modula- 
tion, because the action of the mind has 
already attuned the organs to an aptitude 
for such modulated expression. In short, 
the language (to the extent of the voca- 
bulary of the speaker) instinctively obeys 
the call of the necessity ; and, from 
among the synonimes of speech, the 
syllables spontaneously present them- 
selves that harmonize most readily with 
the modulation which the feeling dic- 
tates. 
Not so in the composition of the 
closet. The feeling there is to be soli- 
cited, rather than obeyed; or to be 
counterfeited, where it cannot be com- 
manded :—especially by the periodical 
contributor, who writes, in all proba- 
bility, not because he is excited; but 
who endeavours to excite himself, be- 
cause he must write. The rhythmical 
modulation is to be assumed—perhaps 
according to some preconcerted system, 
or some pedantic rule—which, it is ten 
chances to one, has been founded in 
error, and is adopted not by judgment 
but prescription. It flows not spon- 
taneously from the instinct of feeling. 
It is the result of elaboration and art; 
and, like his tropes and figures, it comes 
not from sympathetic inspiration, but 
all other faculties and endowments, and all 
that can be attained, can only make a per- 
tinacious wrangler, or a prosing speaker. 
Either of these, however, though not an 
orator, may be sufficiently furnished for a 
prating barrister, or a noisy demagogue, 
Advantages and Disadvantages of Periodical Writing. - 
525 
is drawn from the memory and the 
book : and, of all the books ‘with 
whose lumber pedantry has oppressed 
and stultified the memory, those of 
rhetoric are the silliest and the worst.* 
But, suppose the writer, really warmed 
and pregnant with his theme—suppose 
him to possess that happy temperature. 
of quick excitability to identify himself 
with his subject--to enter into all the 
sentiments, and feel all the inspirations, 
that belong to it—[I am speaking of 
writers upon subjects of polite litera~ 
ture—all of which, in all their extensive 
range—from the epic or the dramatic 
poem, to an essay on furnishing of a 
lady’s boudoir,—the criticism of a fugi- 
tive novel, or of an opera ballet —have 
some connexion with sentiment,. with 
feeling, or imagination,]—yet, so far is 
this excitability from securing him from 
the danger of critical defect and incon- 
gruity, that the more vivid the excite- 
ment, and the more rapid his. concep- 
tions, the more difficult it is for him to 
avoid such incongruities ; and the more 
necessary it is, that what he has written 
with rapidity and heat, should lie by for 
a while, till the heat shall have sub- 
sided, that it may be revised with cri- 
tical and deliberate consideration, 
Thought flows upon thought more 
rapidly than the pen can utter; and, 
if the imagination teem, metaphor flows 
upon metaphor, and overleaps, or loses 
sight of the less vivid suggestions of 
the reason which should give them logi- 
cal connexion. The illustrations remain, 
but the argument they should exemplify 
or impress becomes broken and obscure; 
and the writer floating, as it were, in the 
chaos of his own disjointed conceptions, 
becomes copious without coherence. 
and figurative without significance. Im-’ 
pressions that were vivid at first, and 
should havebeen struck off in a brief sen- 
tence, or with a glowing word, if retained 
and dwelt upon, lose their freshness and 
their warmth, and degenerate into cir 
cumstantiality and detail ;—or an image- 
changes its aspect, or is intruded upon 
by another, before the pen can have 
clothed it in the first suggested words. 
Broken and incongruous metaphors be- 
come, in such instances, the conse- 
quence 
* The treatises of scholastic logic ate not 
a great deal better. Let them confine their 
influence to the jargon of the courts, and 
the sophistie squabbles of scholastic casuis- 
try: the free energies of literary intellect 
have little to do with their mechanisms. — 
