Clio

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1772 edition. Excerpt: ... ther impossible. In such an uneasy dilemma, the unsteady excursions of wit give the mind its natural action, without fatigue, and relieve it delightfully, by employing the imagination without requiring any reflection. Those who have an eternal appetite for wit, like those who are ever in quest of diversion, betray a frivolous minute genius, incapable of thinking. Fine writing is but an easy picture of nature, as it arises to view upon the imagination. It is the expression of our first thoughts, or at least of what ought to be so; and we are surprised in the most celebrated writings, to find that they are wholly familiar to us, and seem to be exactly what we ourselves think and would fay; and bad writers seem to have been under some restraint, that put them out of a path that lay directly before them. Would you not then think, that fine writing should be very common? But But I must pray you to recollect, that elegance, though it consists chiefly in prop: iety and ease, yet it is attained by very sew. I have already intimated the reason: true taste and sentiment lie deep in ths i*: irid, often incorporated with prejudices; and it requires vast judgment to bring the beauteous ore to light, and to refine it. I should not be impartial and candid, if I did not own to you that learning, in much the greater part of mankind, distorts the genius as much as laced stays do the body; oppresses the natural seeds of propriety and beauty in the imagination; and renders men ever incapable of writing or even thinking well. When you except a sew men of distinguished talents, ladies both write and speak more agreeably than scholars. If you ask me the reason of this, I must inform you, that the easy and natural excursions of the imagination are seldom checked.