PART II.

ESSAY II.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE STYLE OF STEELE.

Ат T the period when Steele commenced his labours as a writer of periodical Essays, little attention had been paid to accuracy of style or beauty of composition. To study the structure of a sentence, its harmony, compactness, or strength, and its relative connection as to variety and perspicuity with the surrounding text, were employments, however important, usually neglected, and, if pursued at all, generally deemed pedantic.

Swift, perhaps our earliest prose writer who made correctness and purity his peculiar province, had not, when Steele began his literary career, acquired that influence over the diction of his country in the departments of accuracy and precision which he afterwards obtained. Composition remained, with few exceptions, loose, disjointed, and slovenly; without choice of phrase

or vigour of arrangement; and if occasionally exhibiting melody, richness, and force, these are to be attributed not to analysis, scientific acquirement, and design, adapting the powers of a copious language to the nature of the theme, but to the strength of momentary feeling, to the casual felicities of genius.

I am afraid it cannot be affirmed, that our author contributed much to improve or embellish the art of composition. He found it incorrect, and left it so. He is seldom, however, unintelligible; and though he can establish few claims to dignity or elegance, his pages are never deficient in vivacity and ease. Yet of these, I imagine, it must be allowed that his vivacity is more the result of thought than of expression; and his ease the consequence rather of feebleness and relaxation, than of tasteful and assiduous cultivation,

It was the opinion of Mr. Addison, that "there is as much difference between comprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language, and that of an ordinary writer, as between seeing an ob ject by the light of a taper and the light of the sun."

It had been fortunate for the literary reputation of Steele had he entertained a similar idea, and composed accordingly. Nothing has contributed so much to depreciate him in the esti

mation of the public, as the evident inferiority of his style, when compared with that of his friend and coadjutor. It is given to few to judge of the accuracy of information, or the strength and concatenation of argument; but many, in the present age, are competent to decide on the accuracy and selection of language, on the modula→ tion and cadence of a period; and where one individual may rise offended from a volume by the want of depth in reasoning, or of authenticity in subject, twenty shall be disgusted by negligence and harshness of style, by irregular cou struction, or vulgar phraseology.

That the reflection, good sense, and knowledge of character, which Steele every where displays in his writings, would have made a greater impression on the mind had they been clothed in diction of a sweeter and more graceful cast, will not be denied by any who have felt the seductive and enchanting powers of harmonious composi tion. But, unhappily, purity in the selection of words, and a curious felicity in their arrangement, were never, according to his own confession, the ambition or object of our author. The very title of his first series of papers seems to have warped and led astray his judgment; and he idly conceived that, having assumed the appellation of the Tatler, his language should re

semble the chit-chat and common conversation

of the day. "The nature of my miscellaneous work," says he, "is such, that I shall always take the liberty to tell for new such things (let them have happened never so much before the time of writing) as have escaped public notice, or have been misrepresented to the world; provided that I am still within rules, and trespass not as a tatler any farther than in incorrectness of style, and writing in an air of common speech? That this was not an hasty decision, the product of the moment, and then laid aside, but acted upon in some degree throughout the whole of his periodical works, and avowed at a period long subsequent to their completion, is evident from the following passage in his dedication of the Drummer to Mr. Congreve: "The elegance, purity, and correctness in his writings (speaking of Addison's) were not so much my purpose," he observes, 66 as in any intelligible manner as I' could, to rally all those singularities of human life, through the different professions and characters in it, which obstruct any thing that was truly good and great."

To imagine that essays addressed to the people at large, intended to improve their morals, cor

Tatler, No. 5.

rect their taste, and ridicule their frailties, should be written in the tone of common conversation, not only without any research after purity and elegance, but even rendered purposely incorrect in point of style, must surely be considered as one of the most preposterous conceptions that ever entered the brain of an author. Nothing, without doubt, could be contrived better calculated to depress the powers of a writer, and to render his efforts to instruct and please totally useless and inefficient, than this extraordinary plan, which, had Sir Richard fully acted upon and carried into execution, would long ago have consigned his works to merited oblivion.

1

It will readily be granted, that elaborate diction and profuse ornament, majesty of cadence and intricacy of collocation, are foreign to the nature of a popular essay. But between this excessive brilliancy and colloquial barbarism the distance is immense. In the interval there may be found a simplicity not careless and languid, but graceful, sweet, and unaffected, admitting of a due degree of embellishment, and yet speaking the very language of nature, and bringing forward without disguise the character and feelings of the author. Of a style thus simple, chaste yet elegant, the acquisition is not of easy purchase, but requiring much taste, much cultiva