e
in outside show, to which they sacrifice everything, and ignorance of
the true worth and hidden structure both of words and things. With a
sovereign contempt for what is familiar and natural, they are the slaves
of vulgar affectation--of a routine of high-flown phrases. Scorning to
imitate realities, they are unable to invent anything, to strike out one
original idea. They are not copyists of nature, it is true; but they
are the poorest of all plagiarists, the plagiarists of words. All is
far-fetched, dear bought, artificial, oriental in subject and allusion;
all is mechanical, conventional, vapid, formal, pedantic in style and
execution. They startle and confound the understanding of the reader by
the remoteness and obscurity of their illustrations; they soothe the ear
by the monotony of the same everlasting round of circuitous metaphors.
They are the mock-school in poetry and prose. They flounder about
between fustian in expression and bathos in sentiment. They tantalise
the fancy, but never reach the head nor touch the heart. Their Temple
of Fame is like a shadowy structure raised by Dulness to Vanity, or
like Cowper's description of the Empress of Russia's palace of ice, 'as
worthless as in show 'twas glittering'--

It smiled, and it was cold!

NOTES to ESSAY VIII

(1) I have heard of such a thing as an author who makes it a rule
never to admit a monosyllable into his vapid verse. Yet the charm and
sweetness of Marlowe's lines depended often on their being made up
almost entirely of monosyllables.

ESSAY IX. ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER

Effeminacy of character arises from a prevalence of the sensibility
over the will; or it consists in a want of fortitude to bear pain or to
undergo fatigue, however urgent the occasion. We meet with instances of
people who cannot lift up a little finger to save themselves from ruin,
nor give up the smallest indulgence for the sake of any other person.
They cannot put themselves out of their way on any account. No one makes
a greater outcry when the day of reckoning comes, or affects greater
compassion for the mischiefs they have occasioned; but till the time
comes, they feel nothing, they care for nothing. They live in the
present moment, are the creatures of the present impulse (whatever it
may be)--and beyond that, the universe is nothing to them. The slightest
toy countervails the empire of the world; they will not forego the
smallest inclination they feel, f