Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/187

 affectation of praise; but calmly study the separation of opinions, find the errors have intervened, awake antiquity, call former times into question; but make no parties with the present, nor follow any fierce undertakers; mingle no matter of doubtful credit with the simplicity of truth, but gently stir the mould about the root of the question.

The remarks 'on epistolary style' are rich in humour and good sense, as well as curiously illustrative of the singular fashion of the time. 'Sometimes men make baseness of kindness,' observes the writer; and proceeds to illustrate the fact, in a manner which may remind us of Thackeray's, by examples of absurd and verbose adulation, expressed in phrases 'that go a-begging for some meaning, and labour to be delivered of the great burden of nothing.'

A word seems to have dropped out of the following admirable sentence; but the beetle-headed boobies to whose carelessness the charge of Jonson's posthumous writings was committed by the malignity of accident were incapable of noticing the nonsense they had made of it.

The next property of epistolary style is perspicuity, and is oftentimes [lost] by affectation of some wit ill angled for, or ostentation of some hidden terms of art. Few words they darken speech, and so do too many; as