get up school-exercises on any given subject in a
masterly manner at twenty, and who at forty are either
where they were—or retrograde, if they
are men of sense and modesty. The reason is,
their vanity is weaned, after the first hey-day and
animal spirits of youth are flown, from making an
affected display of knowledge, which, however useful,
is not their own, and may be much more simply stated;
they are tired of repeating the same arguments over
and over again, after having exhausted and rung the
changes on their whole stock for a number of times.
Sir James Mackintosh is understood to be a writer in
the Edinburgh Review; and the articles attributed to
him there are full of matter of great pith and moment.
But they want the trim, pointed expression, the ambitious
ornaments, the ostentatious display and rapid volubility
of his early productions. We have heard it objected
to his later compositions, that his style is good
as far as single words and phrases are concerned,
but that his sentences are clumsy and disjointed,
and that these make up still more awkward and sprawling
paragraphs. This is a nice criticism, and we
cannot speak to its truth: but if the fact be
so, we think we can account for it from the texture
and obvious process of the author’s mind.
All his ideas may be said to be given preconceptions.
They do not arise, as it were, out of the subject,
or out of one another at the moment, and therefore
do not flow naturally and gracefully from one another.
They have been laid down beforehand in a sort of formal
division or frame-work of the understanding; and the
connexion between the premises and the conclusion,
between one branch of a subject and another, is made
out in a bungling and unsatisfactory manner.
There is no principle of fusion in the work: he
strikes after the iron is cold, and there is a want
of malleability in the style. Sir James is at
present said to be engaged in writing a History
of England after the downfall of the house of
Stuart. May it be worthy of the talents of the
author, and of the principles of the period it is
intended to illustrate!
[Footnote A: The late Rev. Joseph Fawcett, of Walthamstow.]
[Footnote B: At the time when the Vindiciae Gallicae first made its appearance, as a reply to the Reflections on the French Revolution, it was cried up by the partisans of the new school, as a work superior in the charms of composition to its redoubted rival: in acuteness, depth, and soundness of reasoning, of course there was supposed to be no comparison.]
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