Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/269

Rh and having given You these few Directions for the forming Your Style by reading the celebrated Writers of Italy and England, I shall take my Leave of this Subject, after I have just mentioned this one Particular, that perhaps the best Way to discern the Beauties of good Writing, is, to read some of the worst.  Ogilby and  Dryden will show You the difference, and when You perceive the insufferable Dulness of the one, You will see more clearly the Brightness of the other. Light indeed will show itself; but a Jewel looketh brighter in a Heap of Coals, than in the Lustre of a Crown, and Beauty is more conspicuous in the Neighbourhood of Deformity, than in the Circle of the Court.

Rh