man, like the new edition of a book, from which many passages, that formed the chief glory of the editio princeps, have been expunged the whole character of the style corrected without being thereby improved-just like the later editions of the Pleasures of Imagination,' which were written by Akenside when he was about twenty-one, and altered by him at forty— to the exclusion or destruction of many most splendida vitia, by which process the poem, in our humble opinion, was shorn of its brightest beams, and suffered disastrous twilight and eclipse-perplexing critics."

Here is a sentence of thirty lines, beginning with "pastimes" and ending with "poems," in which upwards of one hundred ideas are thrown together in one mess of crudity and confusion; congenial food, I have no doubt, for your true sportsman, but somewhat too massive and multifarious for the digestive organs of ordinary mortals. In regard, however, to mere length, Wilson and all other writers are surpassed by Hazlitt, who, in his notice of Coleridge, has contrived to spin out a single sentence to one hundred and ten lines! It contains the word "and" ninety-seven times, with only one semicolon, and is probably the longest sentence in any author, ancient or modern.

In an inscription to the memory of the late Lord George Bentinck, I have discovered a style of composition of an entirely novel character. The inscription was thus put forth in the public prints :

"Bentinck Testimonial.-The Committee connected with

the Notts Testimonial to the late Lord George Bentinck, have at length decided upon the following inscription :

"To the memory of Lord George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck, second surviving son of William Henry Cavendish Scott, fourth duke of Portland, &c., whose ardent patriotism and uncompromising honesty were only equalled by the persevering zeal and extraordinary talents, which called forth the grateful homage of those who, in erecting this memorial, pay a heartfelt tribute to exertions which prematurely brought to the grave one who might long have lived the pride of his native country."

This is a style unknown to any system of rhetoric, ancient or modern. It is peculiar to the nineteenth century, and may, not inappropriately, be called the railway style. It is alike remarkable for the rapidity of its transitions from thought to thought, and for the length of theme the writer may go over without drawing breath. It has no time for colons or semicolons, and bestows but a passing notice on the commas. As to full stops, it admits of only one, and that it calls a terminus. Stops were well enough in the steady, stately, stage-coach phraseology of the Johnsons, but they are unsuited to our days of electricity and steam. Towards the construction of the above "Inscription," it is to be presumed that, as each member of the committee supplied his quota of the funds, so he furnished his share of the phrase, the different verbal contributions being afterwards strung together by means of "who's " and "which's." One member suggested his lordship's "ardent patriotism;" a

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second his "uncompromising honesty; a third his "persevering zeal;" a fourth his "extraordinary talents;" a fifth the committee's "grateful homage; " a sixth "their heart-felt tribute;' a seventh his lordship's "exertions;" and an eighth, "the pride of his country brought to a premature grave." The great advantage of this style consists in the facility with which the sentence may be spun out to any length, without the slightest effort of memory or understanding, each "who" and "which" suggesting a new thought, conjuring up a fresh idea to the mind's eye, and serving as a cue to what should follow. Had the Notts committee been so advised, they might have continued the inscription thus:

"The pride of his native country, which has been sacrificed by the policy of Lord John Russell, who carried the repeal of the Corn Laws, which has proved so injurious to the agriculturists, who are brought to the verge of ruin by the modern doctrines of free trade, which is daily becoming more popular with our statesmen, who are leagued with the Continental democrats for the annihilation of British commerce, which is the pride and boast of our country."

Style, however, must not be confounded with "mannerism." Every writer has a style of his own, a mode of expressing his thoughts peculiar to himself. Style in this sense is as various as the bodily or the mental characteristics of the

writers. Mannerism, on the other hand, consists in some marked peculiarity in the method of composition; being in regard to style what deformity is in regard to the human features. This peculiarity assumes different forms with different writers. With some it is mere affectation: with others, and by far the greater number, it is quite involuntary, and is as difficult to lay aside, as it is easy to take up. One writer exhibits it in the copious use of foreign words; another in the unnecessary use of parentheses; a third in a startling method of punctuation; a fourth in the repetition of certain words in close juxtaposition; a fifth in the adoption of strange titles for his works. Having already spoken of the use and abuse of foreign words, I shall now proceed to lay before the reader some samples of the other kinds of mannerism.

Nothing affords a clearer demonstration of the incapacity of an author to embody his thoughts in intelligible language than the frequent use of the parenthesis. In an able writer it is often the effect of negligence; in a mediocre one it may be reckoned the consequence of mediocrity; and if in the correctest composition it is sometimes unavoidable, it must be admitted that there are few sentences, in which it occurs, that might not be improved either by its omission altogether, or by a judicious transposition of some of the members of the sentence. The prose writers most

free from this blemish are Gibbon, Hallam, and Macaulay. The one most tainted by it is Charles Lamb. And after all, one half of Lamb's parentheses are only so in form. Substitute commas and semicolons, and you will not find the slightest alteration in the sense. No doubt, real, unmistakable parentheses abound, but they are part of his style; a species of mannerism, characteristic of his lighter compositions. He throws them in upon all occasions; gives them the most fantastic shapes; plays with them; tosses them about; and yet, all the while, the sense is clear, and, in so far as parentheses are concerned, perfectly intelligible. Lamb uses a parenthesis as the author of "Don Juan" does a digression. Indeed, Byron's digressions are nothing but long parentheses, in which he contrives, as it were by accident, to introduce some of his wittiest and wisest sayings.

A parenthesis is to literary composition what a police-officer is to the composition of society. Where there is much disorganization, the constable's staff is often raised to separate conflicting parties, and maintain order and decorum among the several members of the community. Where the intellectual constitution is defective, the parenthesis is frequently in requisition to marshal the jostling ideas, and prevent them from falling foul of each other in their struggles for utterance. The social body that stands least