The following remarks on particular names and circumftances are worthy of attention. But the Universal History has been put into able hands, and we have reason to think, that these objections, if they are real objections, will be entirely obviated. Yet even this mould be done with great caution, 'where ever two parallel histories are the productions of different writers and the second happens to be more judicious than the first. The second detail should not indeed be lo diffule as the first and the editor's abilities must be exercised in comprefling it into a smaller compass. If, for example, the transactions of the Carthaginians with the Romans Mould be omitted in the history of Carthage, the history of that republic will be extremely imperfect, and a!most unintelligible. We agree with our author in thinking that these repetitions are in some measure necessary. ' Indeed, the text of his Biographical Dictionary seems to have been composed for the sake of the notes which were such miscellaneous remarks upon men and opinions, as could not have been incorporated into any regular work, or have been published conveniently in any other form.' Bayle hath made the greatest use of notes of any of the moderns.By the help of notes a hiftory may go on without interruption, and yet a great variety of incidental things, worth recording, and which cannot be introduced with ease into the body of a work, may have a place aligned to them, where they may be attended to at the reader's leisure. By the use of notes the moderns have a considerable advantage over the ancients, who had no idea of such a convenience. They have likewife made the modern history of the Arabians and Turks, in particular, unnecessarily and exceffively tedious, by inserting in the text several different accounts of the same event when it would have occasioned no more trouble to the writer, and have been vastly more agreeable to the reader, to have retained only the most approved account of any event in the text, and have left the other accounts to the notes. To avoid repetitions, they have left almost all the hiftories imperfect, which obliges a reader to look into several,īefore he can find a perfect account of any. 'The writers of the Universal Hifory found themselves in this dilemma, and their very valuable work bears too many marks of it.The former expedient is tedious and ungraceful, the latter makes one of the histories very imperfect and uninteresting. The former is ac liberty to take as much of any foreign history as he hath occasion for, to illustrate his own the other is in a manner under a neceffity, either of making repetitions, or of leaving chasms in one or other of the histories. The writer of a single hiftory hath no embarrassment in comparison of a person, who undertakes to give an account of two, or more nations, whose histories are intermixed with one an, other. 9.Īmong other observations on Method in narrative dircourses, our author has the following: Laboriofum iftud et tædio plenum, fed difficultate ipfâ fru&tuofum, recalefcere ex integro, et resumere impetum fra&um omiffumque.' It is a laborious and tedious task, I own, thus to re-enflame the mind after the first heat is over, to recover an impulse, when its force has been checked and spent in a word, to interweave new parts into the texture of a composition, without disturbing or confounding the original plan but the advantage attending this method will overbalance the difficulty.You will find several things to retain, but still more to reject you will add a new thought here, and alter an. After have finished a compofition, you must, says he, lay it aside, till it is no longer fresh in your memory, and then take it up, in order to revise and correct it. To write with fury, but correct with phlegm. On this occasion it may be of use to recollect the precept of lord Roscommon, Correction will be employed with more advantage afterwards.' As, therefore, we with to affect and interest the minds of our readers, we should endeavour, without lofing time in examining every thing with a minute exactness, to express the whole ftate of our own minds while they are thus affected and interested. Whatever these Sensations be, they will be the same with those with which the composition was written it being almost imposible to counterfeit successfully in fuch a case as this. Consequence of an ill-judged fcrupulofity and delay, we once lose fight of any part of that train of ideas with which our own minds were so warmed and interested, 'it may be impoble to recover it: and perhaps no other train of ideas, though, separately taken, they may appear to be better adapted to the subject, may have the same power to excite those sensations with which we would with the composition might be read.
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