Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/244

200 Sir Walter's peculiar Praise. His Style is the most perfect, the happiest, and most beautiful of the Age he wrote in; majestic, clear, and manly, and he appears every where so superior, rather than unequal to his Subject, that the Spirit of Rome and Athens seems to be breathed into his Work. In the sacred History alone, his Strength and his Spirit fail him: For nothing can preserve that sublime Simplicity, that awful Solemnity, and divine Majesty of the inspired Historians, but their own Words, as they are most plainly and properly rendred into any Language; this is an accidental Confirmation of a former Rh