well-bred and courteous manners of a polished Age. In his writings, the
leading clauses of a sentence are distinguished by their colons: the minor
clauses, by their semicolons; the nice meaning of the details is
expressed, the pleasure and the convenience of his readers are alike
increased, by his right and elegant use of commas. The comma, with us, is
used as a loop or bracket, and for little else: by the more accurate
scholars of the last Age, it was employed to indicate a finer meaning; to
mark an emphasis, or an elision; to introduce a relative clause; to bring
out the value of an happy phrase, or the nice precision of an epithet. And
thus the authors of the great century of prose, that orderly and spacious
time, assembled their words, arranged their sentences, and marshalled them
into careful periods: without any loss to the subtile meaning of their
thought, or any sacrifice of vigour, they exposed their subject in a
dignified procession of stately paragraphs; and when the end is reached we
look back upon a perfect specimen of the writer's art. We have grown
careless about form, we have little sense for balance and proportion, and
we have sacrificed the good manners of literature to an ill-bred liking
for haste and noise: it has been decided, that the old way of writing is
cumbersome and slow; as well might some guerilla chieftain have announced
to his fellow-barbarians, that Caesar's legions were not swift and
beautiful in their manoeuvres, nor irresistible in their advance. I have
spoken of our long sentences, with nothing but full stops: they are
variegated, here and there, with shorter sentences, sometimes of two
words; this way of writing is common in Macaulay or in the histories of
Mr. Green, and I have seen it recommended in Primers of Literature and
Manuals of Composition. With the jolting and unconnected fragments of
these authorities, I would contrast the musical and flowing periods of Dr.
Johnson's "Lives of the Poets": to study these works in solitude, will
probably be sufficient to justify my preference; but to hear them read
aloud, should convert the most unwilling listener into an advocate of my