model; or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed; which in them that know art, and use judgment, is no transgression, but an enriching of art: and lastly, what king or knight, before the conquest, might be chosen, in whom to lay the pattern of a christian hero. And as Tasso gave to a prince of Italy his choice, whether he would command him to write of Godfrey's expedition against the infidels, Belisarius against the Goths, or Charle main against the Lombards; if to the instinct of nature, and the emboldening of art aught may be trusted, and that there be nothing adverse in our climate or the fate of this age, it haply would be no rashness, from an equal diligence and inclination, to present the like offer in our antient stories. Or whether those dramatic constitutions, wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign, shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation -Or, if occasion shall lead, to imitate those magnific odes and hymns, wherein Pindarus and Callimachus are in most things worthy. But those frequent songs throughout the law and prophets, beyond all these, not in their divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition, may be easily made appear over all the kinds of lyric poesy to be incomparable. These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift

of God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation; and are of power besides the office of a pulpit, to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that, which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid and treatable smoothness to paint out and describe, teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example, with such delight, to those especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon truth herself, unless they see her elegantly drest; that whereas the paths of honesty and good life ap

pear now rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant, they will then appear to all men both easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed.”—

"The accomplishment of these things," he proceeds, "lies not but in a power above man's to promise; but that none hath by more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and free leisure will extend. Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite; nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her siren daughters; but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases; to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed at mine own peril and cost, I refuse

not to sustain this expectation from as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them. Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much before hand; but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with chearful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noise and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."

If we now pause to take a retrospect of our best prose writers from 1580 to the restoration in 1660, including SIDNEY, HOOKER, RALEIGH, BACON, BURTON, BROWNE, and MILTON, it will appear that our language during this period was formed upon no regular or legitimate model. Each author arrogated to himself the right of innovation, and their respective works may be considered as experiments how far their peculiar and often very adverse styles were calculated to improve their native tongue. That they have completely failed to fix a standard for its structure cannot be a subject of regret to any man who has impartially weighed the merits and defects of their diction. A want of neatness, precision, and simplicity, is

usually observable in their periods, which are either eminently enervated and loose, or pedantic, implicated, and obscure. Nothing can be more incompact and nerveless than the style of Sidney, nothing more harsh and quaint, from an affectation of foreign and technical terms, than the diction of Browne. If we allow to Hooker and Milton occasional majesty and strength, and sometimes a peculiar felicity of expression, it must yet be admitted, that though using pure English words, the elaboration and inversion of their periods are such as to create, in the mere English reader, no small difficulty in the comprehension of their meaning; a fault, surely of the most serious nature, and ever productive of aversion and fatigue. To Raleigh, Bacon, and Burton, we are indebted for a style which, though never rivalling the sublime energy and force occasionally discoverable in the prose of Milton, makes a nearer approach to the just idiom of our tongue than any other which their age afforded.

It is to the Restoration, however, that we must look for that period when our language, with few exceptions, assumed a facility and clearness, a fluency and grace, hitherto strangers to its structure. The study of French literature, which had attained considerable elegance and precision, was at this era brought into fashion by the Stuarts,