It is possible for an author to paint himself in amiable colours, in this useful page, without incurring the contempt of egotism.  After a writer has rendered himself conspicuous by his industry or his genius, his admirers are not displeased to hear something relative to him from himself.  Hayley, in the preface to his poems, has conveyed an amiable feature in his personal character, by giving the cause of his devotion to literature as the only mode by which he could render himself of some utility to his country.  There is a modesty in the prefaces of Pope, even when this great poet collected his immortal works; and in several other writers of the most elevated genius, in a Hume and a Robertson, which becomes their happy successors to imitate, and inferior writers to contemplate with awe.

There is in prefaces a due respect to be shown to the public and to ourselves.  He that has no sense of self-dignity, will not inspire any reverence in others; and the ebriety of vanity will he sobered by the alacrity we all feel in disturbing the dreams of self-love.  If we dare not attempt the rambling prefaces of a Dryden, we may still entertain the reader, and soothe him into good-humour, for our own interest.  This, perhaps, will be best obtained by making the preface (like the symphony to an opera) to contain something analogous to the work itself, to attune the mind into a harmony of tone.[A]

[Footnote A:  See “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i., for an article on Prefaces.]

* * * * *

STYLE.

Every period of literature has its peculiar style, derived from some author of reputation; and the history of a language, as an object of taste, might be traced through a collection of ample quotations from the most celebrated authors of each period.

To Johnson may be attributed the establishment of our present refinement, and it is with truth he observes of his “Rambler,” “That he had laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations, and that he has added to the elegance of its construction and to the harmony of its cadence.”  In this description of his own refinement in style and grammatical accuracy, Johnson probably alluded to the happy carelessness of Addison, whose charm of natural ease long afterwards he discovered.  But great inelegance of diction disgraced our language even so late as in 1736, when the “Inquiry into the Life of Homer” was published.  That author was certainly desirous of all the graces of composition, and his volume by its singular sculptures evinces his inordinate affection for his work.  This fanciful writer had a taste for polished writing, yet he abounds in expressions which now would be considered as impure in literary composition.  Such vulgarisms are common—­the Greeks fell to their old trade of one tribe expelling another—­the scene is always at