literature. Dr. Johnson, too, had somewhat ear- There can be no question that Dr. Johnson's lier introduced a new manner of writing English, influence on English style was long and extenwhich was recommended by yet more genius and sively felt, nor was there clear evidence that this mental vigor than Sterne's. He added something, influence was in the wane, until some time after as he justly alleges," to the grammatical purity of the beginning of this century. There then apthe language, and to the harmony of its cadence," peared a body of writers, who resisting the force and yet more, he might have added, to its com- of his authority and example, wrote in that free, pactness and precision. But with all these real spirited, and natural manner which accords with improvements of our style, he worsened it, as Mr. the genius of the language as well as of the people Southey would say, or deteriorated it, as he him- who speak it, and to which the national taste is sure self would have said, by the introduction of so to return, as to its home, however it may be for a many words from the Latin and the Greek. The while, led astray by the seductive glare of novelty. body and heart of our language are Anglo-Saxon, From the time that all vestiges of Dr. Johnson's and while it has been enriched and improved by characteristics began to disappear, and a purer the naturalization of new words to express ideas taste prevailed, English style continued to imwhich our simple-minded ancestors did not possess, prove, and the language was never, perhaps, so such foreign intruders should not be so numerous generally well written as it has been in the 19th or conspicuous as to overcrow the natives of the century. Since then it has possessed the terse language. These words of foreign derivation not vigor of the age of Elizabeth, without its quaintonly take away from the homogeneousness of our ness or harshness; the simplicity of the reign of mother tongue, and give to it the air of a piece of Queen Anne, without its looseness; and the rythm patch-work, but they also want the raciness and and correctness of Johnson, without his formality pungent force possessed by the Anglo-Saxon, by or pomp. It has added, in short, precision and force reason of its furnishing nearly all our names of to the ease of nature and the grace of variety. In sensible objects, our household terms, and the proof of this, I may refer to the writings of Southey expressions of our simplest and strongest feelings. and Sir Walter Scott, generally, to the best artiNor was it only by his profusion of Anglicised cles in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, to Latin words, that Dr. Johnson presented a faulty Gifford, to Hallam, to Washington Irving, to the model of style. He had also a stately pomp of elder Bulwer, to Charles Lamb, to very many of manner, which he no more laid aside on light and the lighter articles in the English periodicals, to a gay topics, than on grave and important occasions; few of our own, and to Dr. Channing, though his and he was withal so habitually sententious, that style, perfect as it is in its kind, may be said to he would express the most trite and familiar truth have the excellencies which characterise the last with the solemnity of an oracle. Such as, "Labor century rather than this. necessarily requires pauses of ease and relaxation, and the deliciousness of ease commonly makes us unwilling to return to labor”—“It is not only com-lenged public applause, mon to find the difficulty of an enterprise greater, but the profit less, than hope had pictured it"— "He that never extends his view beyond the praises or rewards of men, will be dejected by Some writers in the most popular English journeglect and envy, or infatuated by honors and nals, perceiving that style had gained greatly in applause." Such truisms, which have been taken vivacity and attractiveness by assuming the free at random from a paper in the Rambler, Vol. III, and careless turn of conversation, or at least of No. 128, should be merely hinted, not formally epistolary writing, have so entirely affected this stated. Even when the weight of matter, as is manner, that they often exceed the utmost license most frequently the case, has much to recommend of extempore and unpremeditated speech. Findit, these insulated sentences, assuming the impor- ing that some happy novelty was occasionally a tance of maxims, seem ostentatious and dictatorial, violation of rule, they make a merit of setting all and are, at best, objectionable for their mannerism. rules at defiance, and systematically seek to give It was in vain that these faults were seen by a piquancy to language by disregarding its propriefew and condemned; that Goldsmith, Hume, and ties. Perceiving that words a little turned from some others, continued to write with the graceful their ordinary acceptation have given a grace to ease and simplicity of Addison, and that the voice the diction of such masters as Burke, or Jeffrey, of criticism was now and then raised to condemn or Sidney Smith, these imitators wrench and these solemn fopperies of style; the various know- twist them to all sorts of strange uses. Having ledge and the sterling sense they bedizened, so re-seen that some of these seasonings were useful to commended them to the mass of readers, that their stimulate the languid appetites of the overcrammagniloquence and sententiousness were every- med reader, they empty their little cruets into the where, either purposely or unconsciously imitated. dish and ruin it. They cannot distinguish between

But the prurient desire of innovation, it seems, could not remain long idle, and it has lately chal

"while it pursues

Things, unattempted yet in prose."

freedom and licentiousness, and like the under-bred | this effect is produced by distortion and exaggerapretender to gentility, mistake impudence and tion? Is not his object, and indeed the main purforwardness for gentlemanly ease.

Of this class of innovators, Mr. Carlyle must be considered as the leader. Possessed of unques tionable talent, he seems determined, by pushing the late licentious novelties of style, and such others as he can devise, to the farthest verge of extravagance, to be the founder of a new school; and this honor, some of his complacent admirers are already disposed to award him. Assuredly no writer has taken such freedoms with the English language-not even the wildest rant of our July orators, or the silliest twaddle of the —— view-or, in thus "overdoing termagant," and out-heroding Herod, has so violated every rule of purity, elegance, rythm and propriety, for the sake of unduly pricking the lagging attention of the reader. In a word, his purpose is to give to what he writes all the piquancy he can, provided it can be understood, and even to risk making it unintelligible, if only he can make it pungent.

ed muse of Don Juan, with all the genius, wit and caustic satire she displays, ever throw Childe Harold, or Pope's Rape of the Lock, or his Moral Essays into the shade. No one knew this better than Byron, who, if he had not written other and better poems than Don Juan, would never have indulged his perverse humor in such a vagary.

pose of writing, answered? I answer that it is not. In the first place, the extraordinary effect of these clap-traps for the reader of these spurs to quicken the flagging intellect-of these flaps imported from Laputa is but temporary. Whenever this caricature style of writing becomes familiar, as it soon must, it loses all that first recommended it both to its inventors and imitators. Besides, with the few whom an author would be most ambitious to please, and who are the final dispensers of literary fame, the difference between elegance and coarseness, Re-between harmony, delicacy, polish and propriety on the one hand, and ruggedness, homeliness and rusticity on the other, can never be abolished; nor where the latter qualities are wanting, can any bold, new, odd devices of language supply their place. Whatever may be the stimulus of their novelty, real beauty, melody and grace will assert their sway over the human heart, as certainly as we find that the burlesque sketches of CruikMr. Carlyle's style of writing corresponds to shanks do not impair our relish for the beautiful the caricature style in painting, which aims to creations of Italian sculpture or painting, or that produce effect by as much distortion and exagger-a farce, however ingenious or comic, cannot superation as is consistent with resemblance. His object sede the higher merit of tragedy or genteel cois to rouse the attention and quicken the concep-medy. Nor can the slip-shod, uncombed, unwashtions of his reader; and not trusting solely to the originality, or force, or justness of the thought, to derive what aid he can from the quaintness and strangeness of the expression. He is, in this way, sure of the praise of boldness for his new, wild, out of the way phrases, if for nothing else, with the vulgar herd of readers, who are all the while kept in a sort of wonderment, very much as if they were listening to the mixture of rhap- The style that has been thus reprobated, has sody and burlesque of a clever man half drunk, or been, with some slight qualifications, warmly on the verge of insanity. If there be anything in commended by the London and Westminster Rethe thought that is truly just, and sensible, and view, in its notice of "The French Revolution," striking, as there often is, the author is likely to in the July number. The reviewer admits that obtain the more credit for it by reason of the odd "a style more peculiar than that of Mr. Carlyle, language in which it is conveyed. The awakened more unlike the jog-trot characterless uniformity attention into which the reader is surprised, is which distinguishes the English style of this age regarded by the admirers of this style, as evidence of periodicals, does not exist." He admits, too, of a livelier and clearer conception of the thought. that some of the peculiarities of this author are But in this they are often mistaken. A caricature mere mannerisms, "from some casual associations, may be, and not unfrequently is, obviously like and that some of his best thoughts are expressed the original; but the resemblance is commonly in a phraseology borrowed from the German metafar inferior to that of a regular portrait by a mas-physicians." But after these admissions, the reter. The pleasure it gives arises not so much from viewer adds: "These transcendentalisms and the the fidelity of the likeness or the skill of the artist, accidental mannerisms excepted, we pronounce as from surprise that there should be any resem- the style of this book to be not only good, but of blance where there is so much exaggeration. The surpassing excellence; excelled, in its kind, only grotesque may divert us by its oddity and incon- by the great masters of epic poetry; and a most gruity, but it is only the beautiful that inspires us suitable and glorious vesture for a work which is with admiration. itself, as we have said, an epic poem." I cannot resist the temptation of citing one or two specimens of this style of "surpassing excellence," and which the reviewer intimates is to be the model of all future historians. They must be considered

But, as some may say, if the mass of readers are pleased, and if they are made to attend to those facts and propositions which the author wished to impress on their minds, what does it signify that

as fair specimens, as they are among those selected by the eulogising reviewer himself.

The fourth book thus opens in one of the author's soberest moods:

"The universal prayer, therefore, is to be fulfilled! Always in days of national perplexity, when wrong abounded, and help was not, this remedy of States General was called for, by a Malesherbes, nay by a Fenelon: even parliaments calling for it were 'escorted with blessings. And now behold it is vouchsafed us; States General shall verily be!

men.

"To say, let States General be, was easy; to say in what manner they shall be, is not so easy. Since the year 1614, there have no States General met in France; all trace of them has vanished from the living habits of Their structure, powers, methods of procedure, which were never in any measure fixed, have now become wholly a vague possibility. Clay, which the potter may shape this way or that:-say rather, the twenty-five millions of potters: for so many have now, more or less, a vote in it! How to shape the States General! There is a problem. Each body-corporate, each privileged, each organized class, has secret hopes of its own in that matter; and also secret misgivings of its own,-for, behold, this monstrous twenty-million class, hitherto the dumb sheep which these others had to agree about the manner of shearing, is now also arising with hopes! It has ceased, or is ceasing to be dumb; it speaks through pamphlets, or at least brays and growls behind them-in unison,-increasing wonderfully their

volume of sound."

hope reached; down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal! The bread we extorted from reaped and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not the rugged glebe, and with the toil of our sinews, wholly for another, then; but we also shall eat of it, and be filled? Glorious news (answer the prudent elders,) but all too unlikely!-Thus, at any rate, may the lower people, who pay no money taxes, and have no right to vote, assiduously crowd around those that do; and most halls of assembly, within doors and without, seem animated enough."

On the preceding passage the puffer of a brother reviewer remarks, "Has the reader often seen the state of an agitated nation made thus present, thus palpable? How the thing paints itself in all its greatness-the men in all their littleness! and this is not done by reasoning about them, but by showing them." Letting this pass, I will cite one more passage, in which the author thus opens a chapter with a notice of the rescue of the Hotelde-Ville from the flames:

"In flames, truly-were it not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot, shifty of head, has returned.

"Maillard, of his own motion, for Gouvion or the rest would not sanction him-snatches a drum; descends the porch-stairs, ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls, his rogue's-march; to Versailles! allons; à Versailles! as men beat on kettle or warming-pan, when angry shebees, or say, flying desperate wasps, are to be hived;

The next chapter thus notices the election of and the desperate insects hear it, and cluster round it,deputies to the States General:

"Up then, and be doing! The royal signal-word flies through France as through vast forests the rushing of a mighty wind. At parish churches, in townhalls, and every house of convocation; by bailliages, by senechalsies, in whatsoever form men convene; there, with confusion enough, are primary assemblies forming. To elect your electors; such is the form prescribed: then to draw up your writ of plaints and grievances, of which latter there is no lack.

"With such virtue works this Royal January edict; as it rolls rapidly in its leathern mails, along the frostbound highways, towards all the four winds. Like some fiat or magic spell-word;—which such things do resemble! For always, as it sounds out, 'at the market cross,' accompanied with trumpet-blast; presided by bailli, seneschal, or other minor functionary, with beefeaters; or, in country churches, is droned forth after sermon, au prône des messes paroissales; and is regis tered, posted, and let fly over all the world,-you behold how this multitudinous French people, so long simmering and buzzing in eager expectancy, begins heaping and shaping itself into organic groups, which organic groups, again, hold smaller organic grouplets; the inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate speaking and acting. By primary assembly, and therefore secondary; by successive elections,' and infinite elaboration and scrutiny, according to prescribed process,-shall the genuine plaints and grievances' be at length got to paper; shall the fit national representative be at length

simply as round a guidance, where there was none; so now these menads round shifty Maillard, riding-usher of the Châtolet. The axe pauses uplifted; Abbé Lefevre is left half-hanged; from the belfry downwards all vomits itself. What rub-a-dub is that? Stanislas Maillard, Bastile-hero, will lead us to Versailles. Joy to thee, Maillard; blessed art thou above riding-ushers! Away then, away!

"The seized cannon are yoked with seized carthorses: brown-locked Demoiselle Théroigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as gunneress, with haughty eye and serene fair countenance;' comparable some think to the Maid of Orleans, or even recalling 'the idea of Pallas Athene.' Maillard (for his drum still rolls) is, by heavenrending acclamation, admitted General. Maillard hastens the languid march. Maillard, beating rhythmic, with sharp ran-tan, all along the quais, leads forward with difficulty, his menadic host. Such a host, marched not in silence. The bargeman pauses in the river; all wagoners and coach-drivers fly; men peer from windows,-not women, lest they be pressed. Sight of sights: Bacchantes, in these ultimate formalized ages! Brown Henri looks from his Pont-Neuf; the monarchic Louvre, medicean Tuileries see a day not theretofore seen."

Such is the work which the reviewer pronounces "not so much a history as an epic poem," whose extravagancies of diction, often is tasteless as they are affected, he would place in the same category with the inspirations and exquisite art of "How the whole people shakes itself, as if it had Shakspeare and Milton, of Homer and Virgil, of one life; and, in thousand-voiced rumor, announces Tasso and Ariosto, of Byron and Scott. It is the that it is awake, suddenly out of long death-sleep, picturesque and graphic character of Mr. Carand will thenceforth sleep no more! The long-looked-lyle's book, on which the reviewer founds so out

laid hold of.

for has come at last; wondrous news, of victory,

deliverance, enfranchisement, sounds magical through rageous a panegyric. These are sufficient in his every heart. To the proud strong man it has come; eyes, not only to redeem it for the faults he has whose strong hands shall no more be gyved; to whom noticed, but also to exalt it into poetry. But he boundless unconquered continents lie disclosed. The

weary day-drudge has heard of it; the beggar with his evidently confounds the separate provinces and crust moistened with tears. What! To us also has excellencies of poetry and of prose. The purpose