Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.
I must beg you to indulge me in the matter of hyphens.... You will find that I have marked out a great many in the proofs. We arein danger of Germanizing our printing by using them so much, and I have a very decided preference in the matter.
The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.
What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines!