and love Learning for it felf, not for lucre, or any other end, but the fervice of God and of Truth, and perhaps that lafting fame and perpetuity of praife which God and good men have confented fhall be the reward of thofe whofe publifht La bours advance the good of mankind, then know, that fo far to diftruft the judgment and the honesty of one who hath but a common repute in Learning, and never yet offended, as not to count him fit to print his mind without a tutor and examiner, left he should drop a scism, or fomthing of corruption, is the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him. What advantage is it to be a Man over it is to be a Boy at School, if we have only fcapt the Ferular, to come under the fefcu of an Imprimatur? if ferious and elaborat Writnings, as if they were no more then the theam of a Grammar-lad under his Pedagogue, must not be utter'd without the curfory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenfer? He who is not trufted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, and standing to the ha zard of Law and Penalty, has no great argument to think himself reputed in the Commonwealth wherin he was born, for other then a fool or a foreiner. When a man writes to the world, he fummons up all his reafon and deliberation to affift him; he fearches, meditats, is induftrious, and likely confults and confers with his judicious friends; after all which don he takes himself to be inform'd in what he writes, as wel as any that writ before him; if in this the most confummat act of his fidelity and ripenefs, not years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring him to that ftate of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his confiderat diligence, all his midnight watchings, and expence of Palladian oyl, to the hafty view of an unleafur'd licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferiour in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of Book-writing, and if he be not repulft, or flighted, muft appear in print like a Puny with his Guardian, and his Cenfors hand on the back of his title to be his bayl and furety, that he is no Idiot, or Seducer, it cannot but be a difhonour and derogation to the Author, to the Book, to the privilege and dignity of Learning." From thefe fpecimens every impartial reader will pronounce, that Milton wrote a style superior to that of the most celebrated authors that went before him. It is however fingular, and deferves to be noticed, as a proof of the ftate of the English lan guage, guage, that, with all his profound and indefatigable fcholarship, and his evident folicitude upon the question of ftyle, Milton is often glaringly ungrammatical, and his periods broken off abrupt and unfinished. Inftances of this laft frequently occur in his Paradife Loft. One that ought to be fingled out, is in perhaps the finest paffage of the whole poem; Satan's speech to his companion in the opening of the work, before he has yet raised himself from off the burning lake. The fpeech begins with a hypothc*tical claufe, "If thou beeft he;" but the hypo thefis is finally left without a confequence. The fentence is fufpended through the whole speech, interfperfed with parenthesis upon parenthesis, and left imperfect at laft. So poffible is it to convey the nobleft fentiments, and the fineft flights of poetry, amidft the most flagrant violation of the rules of grammar. No author has ever received louder or more frequent applaufes than lord Clarendon, author of that most valuable repofitory of incidents and events, the Hiftory of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England under king Charles the first. He was long held up as the perfect model of an hiftorian. "I have met," fays Dr. Felton, in his Differtation on the Claffics, a work formerly of high reputation, "with none that may com pare pare with him in the Weight and Solemnity of his Style, in the Strength and Clearnefs of Diction, in the Beauty and Majesty of Expreffion, and that noble Negligence of Phrafe, which maketh his Words wait every where upon his Subject, with a Readiness and Propriety, that Art and Study are almost Strangers to." A fhort fpecimen may convince any fober and intelligent reader, that Clarendon is every thing that is oppofite to Dr. Felton's eulogium, unless indeed we should except his " noble Negligence of Phrase." Take for example the character he has annexed to the death of lord Strafford. "Thus Fell the greatest Subject in power, and little inferior to any in Fortune, that was at that time in any of the three Kingdoms; Who could well remember the time, when he led thofe People, who then purfued him to his Grave. He was a man of great Parts, and extraordinary Endowments of Nature; not unadorn'd with fome addition of Art and Learning, though that again was more improved and illuftrated by the other; for he had a readiness of Conception, and sharpness of Expreffion, which made his Learning thought more than in truth His firft inclinations and addreffes to it was. the |