the unjogging slide of something, but they cannot tell what, that paces their lame understanding smoothly on, and does not shake it out of a composure, necessary to its weakness.

Simplicity (you know it best of all men breathing), is a weaker word for the same thing, propriety. Whatever is conceived with and expressed with that wants nothing; it has every ornament becoming its demand, not one beyond it. If it had none, it would be naked; if too few, defective; if too many, tawdry. This, my dear friend, is simplicity; and this is your simplicity. Whether we take the word from simplex (sine plica), or from simplus (sine and plus), its true sense must be found in its reverse to duplex; so that every thing is simple, that has nothing added contrary to its own quality; and every thing un-simple, that has foreign and unnatural annexions. If a camel were to be described, it might be done with all the requisite

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requisite simplicity, however loftily the poet should express the beast's raised neck, majestic pace, and venerable countenance. But from the moment he began to mention claws and courage, as the camel's attributes, his deviation from the rules of true simplicity would justly call for the reproach of too magnificently adorned; not because camels ought not to be spoken of magnificently, but because there should not be assigned them a magnificence repugnant to their nature.

Long as this letter is already, I have something still to add, relating to a prose piece I informed you I should want your judgment on. It is my tract of new improvements in the art of war, by sea and land. This piece is very full of novelty, and possibly will have much future consequence. And yet the supercilious narrowness in vogue may make it be supposed, that nothing of this nature can be worth regard, nor authorised by a commission,

to

to think rationally. To such heads it were of little influence to say, how much I saw and learned in armies of three different nations at the outset of my life (too soon engaged in foreign ramblings). A still less effect would follow, if I went about to make them sensible, how preferable to whole lives of mill-horse rounds in practical contractions, an extended theory may be, when exercising a not-unadapted genius, long and obstinately bent on all examinations proper to that study.-Would it not be better I should spare myself the trouble of these undeserved apologies, to such a war-defaming race as we know where to look for? and, instead of a dry dissertation on what might be done in arms, present it to the entertained imagination, as what had already been; laying the scene, at some pretended time, in some imaginary country; and uniting, in a lively story, all the use, surprise, and pleasure, of historical narration, filled with warlike and

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132 CORRESPONDENCE WITH A. HILL.

and political events, of a new turn and species to the active demonstrations of a theory, that else might pass for project only. I persuade myself that one might make a piece of this kind very pleasing; and will throw it into such a form, if you conceive it would do better.

Are you to hope no end to this long, long, long, nervous persecution? But, it is the tax you pay your genius; and I rather wonder you have spirits to support such mixture of prodigious weights, such an effusion of the soul, with such confinement of the body, than that it has overstrained your nerves to bear your spirit's agitation!-God Almighty bless you! I should never end at all, if I writ on till I had nothing left that I still wished to tell you, from your (beyond his power of tell

ing),

Most obliged and

grateful humble servant,

A. HILL.

LETTER

LETTER

FROM

MR. WARBURTON

ΤΟ

MR. RICHARDSON.

TO MR. RICHARDSON.

GOOD SIR,

THIS

Dec. 28, 1742.

very day, on receiving my things from London, I had the pleasure to find in the box an obliging letter from you, of the 17th past, with a very kind and valuable present of a fine edition of your excellent work, which no one can set a higher rate upon. I find they have both lain all this time at Mr. Bowyer's.

I have so true an esteem for you, that

you