nius and imagination; it is acknowledged that the fubjects of composition may please, by reason of their exhibiting fcenes adapted to gratify those fenfes. But then we ought, for the fame reafon, not to have excluded the external fenfes, or any faculty whereby we receive pleasure; because it may be faid, with refpect to them all, that ideas may be presented in a difcourfe or compofition, which could have had no power to please or to affect us but in confequence of our having such fenfes. It is in reality, for the reason above-mentioned, equally foreign to the bufiuefs of criticism, to take notice of any of them, any farther than they are neceffarily connected with the pleasures of the imagination.

LECTURE

LECTURE XXXII.

Of PERSPICUITY in Style.

IT may not be amifs to conclude this account of

what it is that makes ftyle pleafing, with a few obfervations on what tends to make it perfpicuous especially as, in fact, this property is the more esfential of the two. For, certainly, the first care of a judicious writer will be to make his meaning easily understood, and therefore to keep his style free from ambiguity.

A fentence must be ambiguous when it is impoffible to determine, from the ftructure of it, to which antecedent a relative refers, or to what principal clause of a sentence a circumstance introduced into it belongs. In the following fentence from Middleton, it doth not appear whether miracles or battles be the antecedent to the relative which.

"They have also many churches and public "monuments erected in teftimony of fuch mira"cles, viz. of faints and angels, fighting for them "in their battles, which, though always as ridi❝culous"

The

The construction would direct us to battles, but the fense to miracles.

The circumftance [with great care and dili gence] in the following fentence is not placed where it is apparent, at first fight, to what it be longs.

"This morning, when one of Lady Lizard's daughters was looking over fome hoods and ri"bands, brought by her tire-woman, with great "care and diligence, I employed no lefs in examining the box which contained them."

66

GUARDIAN.

Thefe ambiguities will be prevented, if, in a cafe like the former, the relative be always placed immediately after its proper antecedent; and, in the latter, if the circumstance be immediately subjoined to that claufe of a fentence to which it belongs, provided it never be placed between two clauses to which it may equally belong. It is not a fufficient vindication of paffages which are left ambiguous for want of attending to thefe particulars, that the fenfe will determine to which the relative or the circumftance refers: for the structure of a fentence ought to be fuch, as to leave the hearer or reader no trouble to find out the meaning, by comparing one thing with another.

It favours perfpicuity, and procures every member of a sentence the degree of attention that is due

to it, when the incidental circumftances of an affirmation are introduced pretty early in a sentence, and the principal ideas are reserved to the laft; for were those circumstances placed after the principal idea, they would either have no attention at all paid to them, or they would take from that which is due to the principal idea; and, in either case, a fentence conftructed in that manner is flat and languid. The circumftances attending Mr. Woolfton's recantation, are well introduced in the fol lowing fentence:

"At Saint Bride's church, in Fleet-street, Mr. "Woolfton (who wrote against the miracles of our Saviour) in the utmost terrors of conscience, "made a public recantation."

But in the next, the claufe [in the fixth book of the Æneid] is aukwardly introduced:

Virgil, who hath caft the whole fyftem of Pla→ "tonic philosophy, so far as it relates to the foul "of man, into beautiful allegories, in the fixth "book of his Æneid, gives us the punishment,"

&c.-

If it be thought proper to crowd a number of circumstances into one fentence, it is adviseable not to place them altogether, but to intermix them with the principal members of the fentence.

There

There may be one inconvenience in referving the principal members of a sentence to the last, that if any thing which precedes it be abfolutely unintelligible without it, and pretty remote from it, it will be difficult for the reader to connect in his mind those disjointed members, so as to make the fense easy. The neceflity for inversion in blank verfe frequently obliges the writers of it to make the reader wait for any fenfe at all, through the whole of a pretty long fentence; as Milton hath done in the beginning of Paradise Loft:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whofe mortal tafte
Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With lofs of Eden; till one greater man
Reftore us, and regain the blissful feat,
Sing heav'nly muse.

The name of the person we are speaking to is introduced with the most respect in the beginning of the fpeech, but it is generally introduced in a more eafy and familiar manner after the first or fecond clause of a sentence, or even later. Of both thefe obfervations we have a happy example in Milton:

Oh, father, what intends thy hand, fhe cried,
Against thy only fon? What Fury, oh fon,
Poffeffes thee, to bend that mortal dart

Against thy father's head.

PARADISE LOST, Book II. Line 727.

The only objection to this paffage is, that the haste the speaker may reasonably be supposed to be in,