Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/151

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Their Heads are crowded with a Multiplicity of undigested Knowledge, which lieth confused in the Brain, without any Order or Distinction. It is the Vice of others, to affect Obscurity in their Thoughts and Language, to write in a difficult crabbed Style, and perplex the Reader with an intricate Meaning in more intricate Words.

The common Way of offending against Plainness and Perspicuity of Style is, an Affectation of hard unusual Words, and of close contrasted Periods: The Fault of Pedants and sententious Writers! that are vainly ostentatious of their Learning, or their Wisdom. Hard

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