Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/147

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Purity and Idiom.
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both in Value and Beauty they will rise above the Standard, rather than fall below it.

Perhaps our Tongue is not so musical to the Ear, nor so abundant in Multiplicity of Words; but its Strength is real, and its Words are therefore the more expressive: The peculiar Character of our Language is, that it is close, compact, and full; and our Writings (if your Lordship will excuse two Latin Words) come nearest to what Tully means by his Pressa Oratio. They are all Weight, and Substance, good Measure pressed together, and running over in a Redundancy of Sense, and not of Words. And therefore

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