Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/185

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
on each other.
141

one another. They are held in one social Bond, and joined, like the Moral Virtues, and Liberal Arts, in a sort of Harmony and Concord. He that cannot write pure, plain English, must never pretend to write at all; 'tis in vain for him to dress and adorn his Discourse, the finer he endeavoureth to make it, he maketh it only the more ridiculous. And on the other side, let a Man write in the exactest Purity, and Propriety of the Language, if he hath not Life and Fire to give his Work some Force and Spirit, 'tis nothing but a meer Corps, and a lumpish unwieldly Mass of Matter. But every true

Genius