clinton's introductory discourse. 39 



national taste, and has palsied the general prosperity. Whatever apo- 

 logies may be made for these political discussions, by ascribing them to 

 an honest difference in opinion, there can be none offered for the style 

 and manner in which they are conducted. In reading the classical works 

 of the ancients, we are astonished at the violations of decorum which 

 appear in their most polite and accomplished authors, who frequently 

 use expressions that no modern writer dare adopt without the certainty 

 of condemnation. But if we excel the ancients in this respect, we are 

 far behind them in other branches of literary good morals. The style of 

 our political writings has assumed a character of rude invective, and 

 unrestrained licentiousness, unparalleled in any other part of the world, 

 and which has greatly tended to injure our national character. This 

 has principally arisen from the indiscriminate applause that has been 

 conferred upon certain eminent political writers. We imitate what we 

 are taught to admire, and unfortunately we have aped their boldness of 

 invective, and fierceness of denunciation, without exhibiting those fasci- 

 nations of genius, which operate like the cestus of Venus, conceal 

 deformity, and heighten all the charms of beauty and grace. Junius 

 arose in the literary, like a comet in the natural, world, menacing pesti- 

 lence and war, and denouncing, in a style of boldness and invective before 

 unknown and unheard of, the constituted authorities of Great Britain. 

 When we analyze his writings, we find no extraordinary power of ima- 

 gination — no uncommon extent of erudition — no remarkable solidity of 

 reasoning. His topics are few; but he was master of his subject. He 

 possessed, in a singular degree, the vivida vis animi :* his conceptions 

 were distinct and luminous, and he expressed them with peculiar point 

 and sententious compression ; but the polished keenness of his invective 



* Lucretius. 



