n in the adventitious ornaments
they wear, which is sufficient to distinguish them.

Burke was so far from being a gaudy or flowery writer, that he was one of
the severest writers we have. His words are the most like things; his
style is the most strictly suited to the subject. He unites every extreme
and every variety of composition; the lowest and the meanest words and
descriptions with the highest. He exults in the display of power, in
shewing the extent, the force, and intensity of his ideas; he is led on by
the mere impulse and vehemence of his fancy, not by the affectation of
dazzling his readers by gaudy conceits or pompous images. He was
completely carried away by his subject. He had no other object but to
produce the strongest impression on his reader, by giving the truest, the
most characteristic, the fullest, and most forcible description of things,
trusting to the power of his own mind to mould them into grace and beauty.
He did not produce a splendid effect by setting fire to the light vapours
that float in the regions of fancy, as the chemists make fine colours with
phosphorus, but by the eagerness of his blows struck fire from the flint,
and melted the hardest substances in the furnace of his imagination. The
wheels of his imagination did not catch fire from the rottenness of the
materials, but from the rapidity of their motion. One would suppose, to
hear people talk of Burke, that his style was such as would have suited
the "Lady's Magazine"; soft, smooth, showy, tender, insipid, full of fine
words, without any meaning. The essence of the gaudy or glittering style
consists in producing a momentary effect by fine words and images brought
together, without order or connexion. Burke most frequently produced an
effect by the remoteness and novelty of his combinations, by the force of
contrast, by the striking manner in which the most opposite and
unpromising materials were harmoniously blended together; not by laying
his hands on all the fine things he could think of, but by bringing
together those things which he knew would blaze out into glorious light by
their collision. The florid style is a mixture of affectation and
common-place. Burke's was an union of untameable vigour and originality.

Burke was not a verbose writer. If he sometimes multiplies words, it is
not for want of ideas, but because there are no words that fully express
his ideas, and he tries to do it as well as he can by different ones. He