repeated without book, as a copy does from
an original. At the same time, I am highly sensible what an extreme
difficulty it would be upon you to alter this method, and that, in such
a case, your sermons would be much less valuable than they are, for want
of time to improve and correct them. I would therefore gladly come to a
compromise with you in this matter. I knew a clergyman of some
distinction, who appeared to deliver his sermon without looking into his
notes, which when I complimented him upon, he assured me he could not
repeat six lines; but his method was to write the whole sermon in a
large plain hand, with all the forms of margin, paragraph, marked page,
and the like; then on Sunday morning he took care to run it over five or
six times, which he could do in an hour; and when he deliver'd it, by
pretending to turn his face from one side to the other, he would (in his
own expression) pick up the lines, and cheat his people by making them
believe he had it all by heart. He farther added, that whenever he
happened by neglect to omit any of these circumstances, the vogue of the
parish was, "Our doctor gave us but an indifferent sermon to-day." Now
among us, many clergymen act too directly contrary to this method, that
from a habit of saving time and paper, which they acquired at the
University, they write in so diminutive a manner, with such frequent
blots and interlineations, that they are hardly able to go on without
perpetual hesitations or extemporary expletives: And I desire to know
what can be more inexcusable, than to see a divine and a scholar, at a
loss in reading his own compositions, which it is supposed he has been
preparing with much pains and thought for the instruction of his people?
The want of a little more care in this article, is the cause of much
ungraceful behaviour. You will observe some clergymen with their heads
held down from the beginning to the end, within an inch of the cushion,
to read what is hardly legible; which, besides the untoward manner,
hinders them from making the best advantage of their voice: others again
have a trick of popping up and down every moment from their paper to the
audience, like an idle school-boy on a repetition day.

[Footnote 6: "The custom of reading sermons," notes Scott, "seems
originally to have arisen in opposition to the practice of Dissenters,
many of whom affected to trust to their Inspiration in their _extempore_
harangues." [T. S.] ]

Let me entrea