had nothing of the _set_ or formal style, the measured cadence, and
stately phraseology of Johnson, and most of our modern writers. This
style, which is what we understand by the _artificial_, is all in one key.
It selects a certain set of words to represent all ideas whatever, as the
most dignified and elegant, and excludes all others as low and vulgar. The
words are not fitted to the things, but the things to the words. Every
thing is seen through a false medium. It is putting a mask on the face of
nature, which may indeed hide some specks and blemishes, but takes away
all beauty, delicacy, and variety. It destroys all dignity or elevation,
because nothing can be raised where all is on a level, and completely
destroys all force, expression, truth, and character, by arbitrarily
confounding the differences of things, and reducing every thing to the
same insipid standard. To suppose that this stiff uniformity can add any
thing to real grace or dignity, is like supposing that the human body in
order to be perfectly graceful, should never deviate from its upright
posture. Another mischief of this method is, that it confounds all ranks
in literature. Where there is no room for variety, no discrimination, no
nicety to be shewn in matching the idea with its proper word, there can be
no room for taste or elegance. A man must easily learn the art of writing,
when every sentence is to be cast in the same mould: where he is only
allowed the use of one word, he cannot choose wrong, nor will he be in
much danger of making himself ridiculous by affectation or false glitter,
when, whatever subject he treats of, he must treat of it in the same way.
This indeed is to wear golden chains for the sake of ornament.

Burke was altogether free from the pedantry which I have here endeavoured
to expose. His style was as original, as expressive, as rich and varied,
as it was possible: his combinations were as exquisite, as playful, as
happy, as unexpected, as bold and daring, as his fancy. If any thing, he
ran into the opposite extreme of too great an inequality, if truth and
nature could ever be carried to an extreme.

Those who are best acquainted with the writings and speeches of Burke will
not think the praise I have here bestowed on them exaggerated. Some proof
will be found of this in the following extracts. But the full proof must
be sought in his works at large, and particularly in the "Thoughts on the
Discontents"; in his "Reflections