Languages & literature > Abridgement of lectures on rhetoric

KERVOUS AND FEEBLE.
II9
Recording to the author's genius. Livy and Herodo¬
tus are diffufe ; Thucydides and Salluft "are concife ;
yet they are all agreeable.
The neivous and the feeble are generally confidered,
,as characters of ftyle of the fame import with the con-
eife and the diffufe. Indeed they frequently coincide ;
yet this does not always hold y fmee there are inftances
of writers, who in the midft of a full and ample ftyle
have maintained a confxderable degree , of ftrength.
Livy is an inftance of the truth of this obfervation.
The foundation of a nervous or weak ftyle is laid in an
author’s manner of thinking. If he conceive an objeCt
ilrongly, he will exprefs it with energy ;hut, if he have
an indiftindt view of his fubjedt, it will clearly ap¬
pear in his ftyle. Unmeaning words and loofe epithets
will efcape him ; his expreffions will be vague and
general ; his arrangement indiftindt ; and our concep¬
tion of his meaning will be faint and confufed. / But a
nervous writer, be his ftyle cqncife or extended, gives
us always a ftrong idea of his meaning./ His mind be¬
ing full of his fiibjeft, his words are always exprefflve ;
every phrafe and every figure renders the picture, which
he would fet before us, more ftriking and complete.
It muft however be obferved, that./loo great ftudy
of ftrength is apt to betray writers into a harfh manner.
Harfhnefs proceeds from uncommon words, from fore-
, pd inverfions in die conftruCHon of a fentence, and