JANUARY 26
Love supplies all the essentials of good breeding, without the help of a dancing-master.
Journal, 4th September, 1776
What is it that constitutes a good style? Perspicuity and purity, propriety, strength, and easiness, joined together. Where any of these is wanting, it is not a good style. Dr. Middleton’s style wants easiness: it is stiff to a high degree. And stiffness in writing is full as great a fault as stiffness in behaviour. It is a blemish hardly to be excused, much less to be imitated. He is pedantic. ‘It is pedantry,’ says the great Lord Boyle, ‘to use a hard word where an easier one will serve.’
to the Reverend Samuel Furly, 1764
