Sometimes many thoughts present themselves; but so confused and
unconnected, that they are not without difficulty reduced to method, or
concatenated in a regular and dependent series; the mind falls at once
into a labyrinth, of which neither the beginning nor end can be
discovered, and toils and struggles without progress or extrication.
It is asserted by Horace, that, "if matter be once got together, words
will be found with very little difficulty;" a position which, though
sufficiently plausible to be inserted in poetical precepts, is by no
means strictly and philosophically true. If words were naturally and
necessarily consequential to sentiments, it would always follow, that he
who has most knowledge must have most eloquence, and that every man
would clearly express what he fully understood: yet we find, that to
think, and discourse, are often the qualities of different persons: and
many books might surely be produced, where just and noble sentiments are
degraded and obscured by unsuitable diction.
Words, therefore, as well as things, claim the care of an author. Indeed
of many authors, and those not useless or contemptible, words are almost
the only care: many make it their study, not so much to strike out new
sentiments, as to recommend those which are already known to more
favourable notice by fairer decorations; but every man, whether he
copies or invents, whether he delivers his own thoughts or those of
another, has often found himself deficient in the power of expression,
big with ideas which he could not utter, obliged to ransack his memory
for terms adequate to his conceptions, and at last unable to impress
upon his reader the image existing in his own mind.
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