[1183] Gibbon (Misc.  Works, i. 219) thus writes of his own style:—­’The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.  Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation; three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect.’  See ante, p. 36, note 1.

[1184] Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i. chap. iv.  BOSWELL.

[1185] Macaulay (Essays, ed. 1874, iv. 157) gives a yet better example of her Johnsonian style, though, as I have shewn (ante, p. 223, note 5), he is wrong in saying that Johnson’s hand can be seen.

[1186] Cecilia, Book. vii. chap. i. [v.] BOSWELL.

[1187] The passage which I quote is taken from that gentleman’s Elements of Orthoepy; containing a distinct View of the whole Analogy of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE, so far as relates to Pronunciation, Accent, and Quantity, London, 1784.  I beg leave to offer my particular acknowledgements to the authour of a work of uncommon merit and great utility.  I know no book which contains, in the same compass, more learning, polite literature, sound sense, accuracy of arrangement, and perspicuity of expression.  BOSWELL.

[1188] That collection was presented to Dr. Johnson, I believe by its authours; and I heard him speak very well of it.  BOSWELL. The Mirror was published in 1779-80; by 1793 it reached its ninth edition.  For an account of it see Appendix DD. to Forbes’s Beattie.  Henry Mackenzie, the author of The Man of Feeling, was the chief contributor as well as the conductor of the paper.  He is given as the author of No. 16 in Lynam’s edition, p. 1.

[1189] The name of Vicesimus Knox is now scarcely known.  Yet so late as 1824 his collected Works were published in seven octavo volumes.  The editor says of his Essays (i. iii):—­’In no department of the Belles Lettres has any publication, excepting the Spectator, been so extensively circulated.  It has been translated into most of the European languages.’  See ante, i. 222, note 1; iii. 13, note 3; and iv. 330.

[1190] Lucretius, iii. 6.

[1191] It were to be wished, that he had imitated that great man in every respect, and had not followed the example of Dr. Adam Smith [ante, iii. 13, note 1] in ungraciously attacking his venerable Alma Mater Oxford.  It must, however, be observed, that he is much less to blame than Smith:  he only objects to certain particulars; Smith to the whole institution; though indebted for much of his learning to an exhibition which he enjoyed for many years at Baliol College.  Neither of them, however, will do any hurt to the noblest university in the world.  While I animadvert on what appears to me exceptionable