218 HUME. 



tive ; the story is unbroken, it is clear, all its parts dis- 

 tinct, and all succeeding in natural order ; nor is any 

 reflection omitted where it should occur, or introduced 

 where it would encumber or interrupt. In both his 

 narrative and his descriptions there is nothing petty, or 

 detailed more than is fit or needful ; there is nothing 

 of what painters call spotty all is breadth and bold 

 relief. His persons are finely grouped, and his subjects 

 boldly massed. His story is no more like a chronicle, 

 or his views like a catalogue of particulars, than a fine 

 picture is like a map of the country or a copy of the subject. 

 His language is more beautiful and powerful than cor- 

 rect. He has no little tendency to Gallicisms. He has 

 many very inaccurate, some ungrammatical phrases. In 

 this respect he is far behind Robertson. The general 

 effect, however, of his diction is unequalled. He cannot 

 be said to write idiomatic English, being indeed a 

 foreigner in that sense ; but his language is often, nay, 

 generally, racy, and he avails himself of the expressions, 

 both the terms and the phrases, which he finds in 

 older writers, transferring them to his own page. In 

 this he enjoys a great advantage over Robertson, who, 

 resorting necessarily to Latin, or to foreign or pro- 

 vincial authors, could not manage such transfers, and 

 Avas obliged to make all undergo the digestive and 

 assimilating process, converting the whole into his own 

 beautiful, correct, and uniform style. Another reach 

 of art Hume has attained, and better than any writer 

 in our language : he has given either a new sense to 

 expressions, or revived an old, so as never to offend us 

 by the neology of the one process or by the archaism 

 of the other. With this style, sustained by his pro- 



