te, would succeed better in
dialogue. But the stimulus, the immediate irritation would be wanting; and
the work would read flatter than ever, from not having the very thing it
pretended to have.

Lively sallies and connected discourse are very different things. There
are many persons of that impatient and restless turn of mind, that they
cannot wait a moment for a conclusion, or follow up the thread of any
argument. In the hurry of conversation their ideas are somehow huddled
into sense; but in the intervals of thought, leave a great gap between.
Montesquieu said, he often lost an idea before he could find words for it:
yet he dictated, by way of saving time, to an amanuensis. This last is, in
my opinion, a vile method, and a solecism in authorship. Horne Tooke,
among other paradoxes, used to maintain, that no one could write a good
style who was not in the habit of talking and hearing the sound of his own
voice. He might as well have said that no one could relish a good style
without reading it aloud, as we find common people do to assist their
apprehension. But there is a method of trying periods on the ear, or
weighing them with the scales of the breath, without any articulate sound.
Authors, as they write, may be said to "hear a sound so fine, there's
nothing lives 'twixt it and silence." Even musicians generally compose in
their heads. I agree that no style is good that is not fit to be spoken or
read aloud with effect. This holds true not only of emphasis and cadence,
but also with regard to natural idiom and colloquial freedom. Sterne's was
in this respect the best style that ever was written. You fancy that you
hear the people talking. For a contrary reason, no college-man writes a
good style, or understands it when written. Fine writing is with him all
verbiage and monotony--a translation into classical centos or hexameter
lines.

That which I have just mentioned is among many instances I could give of
ingenious absurdities advanced by Mr. Tooke in the heat and pride of
controversy. A person who knew him well, and greatly admired his talents,
said of him that he never (to his recollection) heard him defend an
opinion which he thought right, or in which he believed him to be himself
sincere. He indeed provoked his antagonists into the toils by the very
extravagance of his assertions, and the teasing sophistry by which he
rendered them plausible. His temper was prompter to his skill. He had the
manners of a man