has inclined many to believe that the greater part of them had no meaning at all, but were employed merely to give a greater flow to the compolition. Bet, though they certainly have that effect, I cannot believe that a people of so correct a tafle as the Greeks would employ words, and fo many of them 100, merely for the fake of the found, without any meaning, especially in their profe componitions, and in their orations, where they were Speaking to the people upon bufinefs of the greatest importance. The learned world, therefore, I think, are much obliged to the German profeffor Hoegenville, who has endeavoured, and I think for the greater part fuccefsfully, to give a meaning to every one of them.

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Being obliged, for the reafon I have mentioned, to write in English, it often grieves me that I can not give, both to my words and matter, the connection which the Greeks give by the means of these particles, fo that my fentences, do what I can, are often as much unconnected, as if there were no connection in the matter.

"If what I have faid of the Greek compofition be true, how wonderful muft the orations of Demofthenes have been, fpoken by himself, with all the graces of action and pronunciation? For, befides his action, in which he is allowed to have excelled, what plea fure to the ear muft have given the melody and rhythm of his language, both much ftudied by him -the variety alfo of his artificial arrangement, his periods divided into members of different lengths, and containing matter of different kinds, and which, therefore, muft have been spoken, as I have obferved, with changes of tone-his file too, adorned with figures very different

from the figures now ufed, which fick out of the work and alter quite the colour of the ftile, fuch as ex clamation, much used even by Cicero, and fuch as epithets which are the diftinguishing characteristic of the poetic tile, but of which the file of Demofthenes is almoft entirely free, (for I have read whole orations of his, where there is not a single epither), the figures he uses being fuch as efcape the attention of the unlearned, and, though the learned perceive that they give an unufual caft to the file, yet they do not know what name to give them? When I confider all these things, I fay again that the orations of Demofthenes, pronounced by himself, not read even by Efchines, who, as he was a very good pleader, I fuppofe, was alfo a good reader, must have been a most wonderful thing, and of beauty so tranf cendent, that we cannot have any idea of it; or, if we could form an idea of it, we fhould not be able to imitate it, even in writing, much lefs in fpeaking, not having the materials upon which he wrought. In other arts, fuch as ftatuary, though we have the materials, yet all connoiffeurs acknowledge that no modern artist has equalled the beauty of the antient Greek statues; but, when a modern language is the materials upon which the writ ing artist must work, it is by nature impoffible to equal the beauty of the Greek compofition, as impoffi ble as it would be to build a fine palace of rough unhewn pebbles.

"Though Demofthenes exceeded, I believe, all the men of his age in the art of pronunciation, yet an oration must first be well compofed, before any pronunciation can make it please a man of fenfe and taste. Now, we know that Demofthenes applied as much to composition as

length, fuch as the political reflections of Sallust upon the Roman fate, in his introduction to Cataline's confpiracy, or his philofophical obfervations on human nature, in his preface to his Jugurthine war; both which might have been proper, if he had been writing a fyftem of morals or politics, or might have been more excufable, if he had been writing a general history of the Roman ftate, but, I think, are very foreign to the hiftory of fingle events in a nation, fuch as the confpiracy of Cataline, or the war of Jugurtha. But by what I have faid, I would not be understood to mean, that the explanation of particular customs and manners of the nation whofe hiftory you write, is improper in history; but, on the contrary, I think it is extremely proper; and I regret very much, that the Roman hiftorians have not been at more pains to explain feveral things of that kind.-Their excule is, that fuch explications were quite unneceflary to thofe for whom they wrote. But they should have confidered, that they were writing for pofterity, and for men of other nations, who knew nothing of the Roman customs and manners. And, indeed, this defect in them would have made the Roman history hardly intelligible to us, if it had not been fupplied by the Greek historians, particularly by the Halicarnaffian and Polybius; who, writing for their own countrymen, have been at pains to inform us of many things concerning the customs of the Romans both in peace and war, and the nature of their government, which otherwife we could not have underflood. It appears, therefore, that history may have fomething of the didactic ftile in it.

"But what fall we fay of the rhetorical ftile, I mean the ftile of

the fpeeches in the antient hiftories? Are they foreign to the subject? And I fay they are not, but, on the contrary, very proper; for they not only vary the file most agiec. ably, and relieve the reader from the difguft of hearing nothing but facts, without reafon or argument; but they are a part, and a material part of the history of nations, where the public bufinefs was carried on chiefly by speaking; for, in fuch a nation, the fpeeches are to be confidered as matters of fact: and accordingly Thucydides tells us, that the (pecches he has given us, many and long as they are, were really fpoken, at least in fubftance, he himself having heard them, or being informed by them who heard them. And, even where the hiftorian could have no fuch knowledge, which is the cafe of Livy and the Halicarnaffian, with respect to the fpeeches which they put into the mouths of the perfonages of the first ages of the Roman ftate; yet, as we are fure that public bufinefs was then carried on by fpeaking, as well as in later times, they are not at all improper, more efpecially as they give the hiftorian an oppor tunity of explaining the counfels and motives of actions, without di greffing or letting his story ftand till. Such fpeeches, therefore, are not to be confidered as epifodes, but as parts, not ornamental merely, but very ufeful, of the hiftory.

"And here the author has an opportunity of bringing into his work, without violating the rules of hiftory, political, and even phi lofophical reflections, and likewife a good deal of the history of other nations, by way of example, and of the fame nation in more antient times. "And it appears, that history is oft pleafant and various compofition, taking in not only the nar

a

rative but the didactic and rhetori cal files, and even fomething of the philofophy of morals and politics, together with examples from the hittory of other nations and of other

times.

"It remains therefore only to be inquired, whether hiftory does not partake of the poetical ftile, as well as of the other ftiles I have mentioned and I fay it does not; and that history is as different from poetry, as it is from painting; for, as Horace fays, uti pictura porfis.

And the chief difference betwixt poetry and painting is the inftrument of imitation, painting imitating by lines and colours, poetry by words. And hence comes the difference betwixt the file of poetry and hiftory. One of the chief cha Tacteriflics of the poetical file is epithers, by which the object is reprefented to the imagination, as it is by painting to the eyes; and it is for this reafon, that Homer abounds fo very much in epithets, bestowing them not only on perfons, but on things; and even the most common things, fuch as earth and water, which in that manner may be painted or reprefented to the imagination in poetry, as to the eye in painting. But in hiftory, even perfons the moft illuftrious, ought not to be described in that way; I condemn therefore in hiftory the defigning perfons by epithets, fuch as the brave prince, the gallant war rier, the philofophic fage, and the like; though I know fuch expreffions are reckoned ornaments of the hiftorical ftile by those who cannot make the proper distinction betwixt the file of poetry and of hiftory. And as to things, I fay there ought never an adjective to be applied to any fubftantive, merely for the fake of adorning it, or exciting any paffion in us, which is the proper definition of an epithet, but only for

the purpofe of narrative or argument. Then there is the ufe of fi milies, by which a thing that may not be fo confpicuous in itfelf, is made more confpicuous by comparifon with another thing. This fi gure very much ornaments the tile, by deferiptions of beautiful things in nature, or art and accordingly the fimilies of Homer are the most ornamented parts of his poems. Then there is the frequent use of metaphors in poetry, which are fhort fimilies: and, Lafily, there is a particular and a minute defcrip. tion of things, called by the antient critics datumos, by which things are fo circumftantially and accurate. ly defcribed, that a painter may reprefent them in colours, by exactly copying the defcription given of them. Of this kind are many defcriptions in Homer, and particularly one in the Odyffey, where he paints as much, as is poffible for words to do, an event most intereft. ing, as all of the kind in poetry are; I mean the difcovery of Uly fes by his old nurfe, when the was washing his feet, an event upon which his whole fortune and the catastrophe of the poem depended. Now, fuch painting does not be long even to oratory, as I have elfewhere fhown, but much lefs to hiftory. The reafon of which is, that the chief end of poetry is to move the pallions; whereas, the bufinefs of history is to inftruct by a faithful narrative, accurate and circumftantial enough to make the things be perceived by the underftanding, but not fo minute, or fo much coloured, as to make them an object of the imagination. Such being therefore the difference betwixt poetry and hiftory, I blame the ftile of every hiftory which abounds with epithets and fimilies, or makes much ufe of metaphors that are not common in the language, or which

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