acuteness highly favourable to the discovery of truth, and enables a person more readily to detect those fallacies and prejudices, by which the generality of men unaccustomed to the exercise of their reasoning faculties, are so apt to be influenced. That composition is an art, and one too, in which great progress may be made, is so much a matter of fact, that an attempt to prove it may be deemed absurd. It may not be in the power of every one, even with the same means of improvement, and with the same degree of diligence, to attain similar excellence; but it may truly be affirmed, that where common sense and industry are possessed, there is no art practised by men, in which their progress may be more equal. Here, however, as in other arts, it is egregious folly to hope for excellence without industry and care. No man ever became an elegant writer by chance. Read the lives of those whose writings have been generally admired, and learn the means by which they attained eminence. Do not suppose, that the superior pleasure enjoyed in reading the works of Addison, Johnson, Hume, Robertson, or Stewart, is the consequence of their being born with a power of expressing their thoughts superior to that of others. When any art is cultivated by mankind, gradual improvement in it is perceptible in communities or nations as well as in individuals; and to trace the progress of English composition may afford a useful lesson, and serve as a proper introduction to those who are about to engage in the study. HISTORICAL VIEW OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION. In tracing the history of English composition, it is scarcely necessary to look beyond the Reformation. Before that period the British writers were few, and these few wrote chiefly in Latin. The Reformation, bringing into general discussion questions which required much acuteness of reasoning, must have tended to improve the national intellect, which was ultimately to improve the national language; but another circumstance connected with the change of religious opinion, contributed to that end still more directly. The Reformers, pitying the ignorance of the people, which had long been the firmest pillar of the popish faith, and eager to open to them the sources of knowledge, wrote and published in their vernacular tongue, which, owing to its rudeness, had hitherto been neglected. Something both of precision and of grace was thus accidentally communicated to the language, while it was employed for effecting a nobler design. In the writings of the Reformers, it would be vain indeed to look for the higher beauties of style, yet it is astonishing to think, that, heated as they were with the spirit of controversy, and with scarcely a model to follow, they should have written so well. In ease and simplicity, the most essential qualities of good writing, they have hardly yet been excelled: their piety, the spirit of their age, and especially the mighty work in which they had engaged, led them to be familiar with the Scriptures, and in copying the artless manner of the Sacred Writers, they, perhaps, without knowing it, copied nature. The reigns of Elizabeth and of James the First, though productive of many names to which English literature is indebted, did little to the advancement of English composition. The writers of that period, following the ancients, adopted the Latin arrangement in the structure of their sentences, which is far too free for the genius of our language. For all the learning and profound sense, which distinguish the productions of Bacon, Raleigh, Hooker, and their contemporaries, we find the perusal of them too laborious to be long continued. The stiffness and inversion, and cumbrous majesty, which stare upon us in every sentence, seem, by disagreeing with our taste, to fatigue our understanding. Strength, indeed, one of the first qualities of style, these writers |