Page:Striking and picturesque delineations.djvu/14

viii of our Author’s manner. One who, on the summits of the Grampian mountains, with a mind of kindred grandeur, treads habitually, as it were, in the sky, naturally acquires a loftiness of thought, inconceivable to the inhabitants of humble regions. His very language and style harmonizes with the objects among which he believes. Lifted by his hills to the clouds and storms, he insensibly imitates the sublime obscurity in which he is almost daily enveloped. His speech, bold, rugged, and abrupt, as the rocks which defy all access but to the wing of the eagle and the vulture, bids equal deﬁance to those who would scan his meaning by the regular steps of criticism. Like the torrent shooting impetuously from crag to crag, his sentences, instead of ﬂowing in a smooth and equal tenor, overleap with noble freedom the mounds and impediments of grammar, verbs, conjugations, and adverbs, which give tameness and regularity to ordinary compositions. Should any reader be startled by these deviations from the established rules of writing, let him pay due homage to the wild and untrammeled originality of genius; and instead of censuring or envying, let him admire the excellence he cannot reach. If the ﬂights of our Author be too high for the languid imaginations, or obtuse intellectual vision of his Southern readers, he may, perhaps, be induced, in some future edition; to lower himself nearer to their level.