526 
quence of an over-affluence of imagina- 
tion:—as, with the tasteless and the 
tardy, they are the result: of affectation 
and:-labour, and of'an ambitious strain- 
ing after poetic language, where there is 
neither the inspiration of poetic feeling, 
nor what may be called the real pre- 
sence of poetic imagery. 
The same observation applies, of 
course, to the phraseology and modula- 
tion of the style—to the rhythmus and 
euphony—whose fitness and correspon- 
dence with the thought expressed, con- 
stitutes, as I have already observed, the 
very soul of lingual harmony. If the 
feeling loses its freshness—the image its 
vivid glow and congruity,—the organic 
perception will lose its tone, and the 
language its appropriate felicity; and 
the succession and the collocation, of 
syllabic.sounds will no longer echo to 
the thought. 
. If the writer, however, be master of 
his subject, and a man of real genius, 
little more is necessary for the remedy of 
all this, but that what has been written 
in haste should be laid aside till 
the subject has been fairly dismissed 
from the imagination ;» when he may 
return to it again with a critic’s eye, 
and find in it only what is expressed, 
not what he imagined and intended. 
His hasty and inaccurate productionmay 
then come forth, from such revision, if 
not all that in the warmth of the first 
impression his imagination had de- 
signed, yet more than all the labour of a 
costive brain could slowly have pro- 
duced. 
Even this essay itself, Sir, is perhaps, 
an illustration of the very errors I have 
been exposing: for it will never be sub- 
jected to the remote reyision which I 
consider as indispensable to correct 
composition: and, though I took up 
my pen, not for the performance of a 
necessary task, but in obedience to im- 
pulse, and at an inconvenient time, 
when I ought to -have been otherwise 
engaged ; yet I have run out, against all 
reason, into inconvenient length, when 
I.only intended to have written a few 
brief sentences: for my original de- 
sign was nothing more than to have 
pointed out two or three of those cha-+ 
racteristic inaccuracies, into which the 
haste of periodical literature almost inevi- 
tably betrays; and to offer, at the same 
~ time, .a word of excuse for them, while 
I warned the readers of such essays 
not to mistake such effusions, however 
brilliant, or however critical they occa- 
sionally may be, for what, from the very" 
Advantages and Disadvantases of Periodical Writing. 
[July 1 
> 
nature of things, it is almost impossible 
they should become—the perfect models 
of literary composition. 
You yourself, Sir, I perceive, have 
been attacked by a diurnal scribe, for 
some instance of supposed inaccuracy, 
or some blemish of taste in a hasty 
paragraph, relative to which, perhaps, 
you will not be very solicitous to de- 
fend yourself; but it may be some 
consolation to you, to find, that the 
most pretending of your competitors 
can deviate quite as far from the grace 
of correctness or felicity of expres- 
sion,as you, in the instance alluded 
to, have been accused of- doing. Thus, 
in a prospectus for a new and im- 
proved series of a certain periodical 
work,—which was deliberately put forth, 
and profusely circulated, as a plea for 
enlarged remuneration, we were told, 
among other improvements, that 
“The Drama will also meet with an 
attention which (to our shame, im a paren- 
thesis, be it spoken) it has not hitherto 
received.” 
Whether, by putting shame in a pa- 
renthesis, was meant placing it in the 
pillory (or whatever else. grammatically 
it may mean,) I cannot pretend to say ; 
but, I confess, I thought it a strange 
sort of specimen of improvement, in style 
at least, to be put forth as a plea for 
turning half-a-crown into three-and-six- 
pence. There were some other paren- 
theses, in the same brief specimen,which, 
did not appear to me to be much more 
happy. 
But, what shall we say to the follow- 
ing first paragraph of the fourth num- 
ber of a publication professing to em- 
brace all the mind, and unite all the 
talent of Europe; and putting forth a 
list of professed contributors in every 
department of Literature, Art and Sci- 
ence, which seemed to include almost 
every name of celebrity, in every de- 
partment of knowledge and accomplish- 
ment, inevery European nation. 
“The nations of the civilized world,” say 
these intellectual cosmopolites, “‘are now 
advancing so rapidly in the knowledge of 
their own real interests, in spite of the. 
cobweb fetters which the fear or the stolidity 
of ancient despotisms are endeavouring to 
impose upon that vast channel of intelligence 
and communication, the liberty of the press, 
that they who undertake the responsible 
office of recording the progress of events 
and opinions, will find themselves, almost 
every month, furnished with new and ample 
materials,” &c. - ~ . ‘ 
Now, Sir, I have already declared 
myself 
