so far from destroying individuality, is really the best way to bring individual characteristics into clear prominence: if all are subjected to the same examination, the range of the questions being sufficiently wide, individualities are thrown into relief with much greater distinctness than they possibly could be by any other process. Comparison is the soul of criticism. In the following work, the account of each author contains a preliminary sketch of his character; the analysis that follows may be viewed as a means of tracing the outcome of that character in his style, and of making his peculiarities felt more vividly by bringing him into extended comparison with others.

The student should be warned emphatically against such blind guides as declaim against the cramping influence of rules for composition, and urge us to work out our own individuality without regard to the precepts of the schools. Sound principles of composition do rot repress genius, but rather do genius a service by preventing it from dissipating itself in unprofitable eccentricities. There is every room for variety within the conditions adopted in the following work: indeed their chief recommendation is that they recognise diversity of style according to diversity of subject and purpose. Students often put the question, What should we do to acquire a good style? A principal aim in this Manual is to make students familiar with the fact that there are varieties of good style. Instead of aiming blindly at the acquisition of "a good style," the writer or the speaker should first study his audience, and consider how he wishes to affect them; and then inquire how far the rhetorical precepts that he has learnt will help him to accomplish his purpose, and how far rhetorical teachers can direct him to the causes of success in those that have best accomplished the same ends in the same circumstances.

Regarding the prominence given to the modern authors, I have only to repeat that the work is intended mainly

for students, and to say that the most rewarding study for them, in the first instance at least, lies in the more recent (which are also the higher) developments of prose style. With the same eye to the primary destination of the work, I have said comparatively little about prose writers anterior to the age of Elizabeth.

The biographies of the various writers are brief; but every pains has been taken to make them accurate. The biographies of the three selected modern men will be found to be more complete than any hitherto published.

January 25, 1872.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

THE alterations that I have made in revising this book for a second edition have been mainly in one direction. I have here and there omitted or modified passages that might have seemed to countenance the idea that goodness or badness in style might be pronounced upon, without reference to the effect aimed at by the writer. This I have done to prevent the slightest suspicion that the criticisms in this book consist in the dogmatic application of any absolute standard of style. In spite of the tolerably plain disclaimer in my first Preface, this absoluteness of view has been not only suspected, but alleged. It is true I have not been able, after diligent search, to find the quotations by which the allegation was supported ; nevertheless, I wish to place the purpose of the book in this respect beyond the possibility of honest misapprehension.

Since the first edition was issued, Mr Trevelyan's biography of Lord Macaulay has appeared, and Mr H. A. Page has published two volumes on the Life and Writings of De Quincey. My sketches of Macaulay and De Quincey can, in consequence, no longer pretend to be more complete than any hitherto published."

December 22, 1880.