DIGRESSION.

It is a fault to delight in rambling from the subject in hand; the historian Theopompus was justly blamed for it; but it does not follow that it is never a virtue to leave the main subject; a little variety is necessary in all ingenious works; and it is observed, that the most regular writers are not read with the greatest pleasure. I could mention some histories, which make the reader gape, and even sleep, though they are written with an exact observation of all the rules of art; a grave style, concise, correct, and sententious; a narrative free from incidents and trifling niceties; no particulars, no excursions; and always upon the strait line, because it is the shortest. Other writers, who sometimes lay aside their gravity, either with respect to the language, or to the subject, and make no scruple to go out of the way to take in an

episode, write a history that continually draws the attention of the reader. He goes through it before he is weary of it. . I shall not examine whether it be a proof of the one of these things, rather than of the other, either that the rules, or the judgment of the reader, are false. I insist upon the fact, and refer myself to the observation of a man of a very good taste. “ What a prodigious distance,” says he, “ there is between a fine work, and a perfect or regular work ! I do not know whether there has been any yet of die latter sort. It is, perhaps, less difficult for a rare genius to attain to greatness and sublimity, than to avoid all manner of faults. The Cid had but one voice at its birth, viz. that of admiration; it prevailed over authority and policy, which endeavoured in vain to destroy it; it re-united in its favour those that are always divided in their opinions and sentiments, great men, and the common people; they all agree in learning it by heart, and in preventing the actors upon the stage when they recite it. In short, the Cid is one of the finest poems that can be made; and one of the finest criticisms that ever was made of any subject, is that of the Cid.” La Bruyère. ¹⁰² This is the finest example that can be alleged of the insufficiency of the rides; the author of the Cid observed almost none of them. The French academy declared him an infringer of them; yet he charmed, and still charms the public. He lost his cause before the masters, but he carried it every where else: he appealed to the people, as that Horatius who killed his sister, and causes the sentence of the judges to be revoked by that tribunal. Montaigne’s essays are another example of a happy irregularity. Whoever should undertake to make that book very methodical, would deprive it of its chief beauties.

For the rest, I am not so much concerned in

vindicating digressions, as one might think: it is a miscellaneous compilation.. Variety is essential to that sort of compositions, and it ought chiefly to be allowed to those who cannot hope to prevent any other way the weariness of the reader. A digression cannot be said to be too long, only because it fills up several pages, but when every part of it takes up too much room; for though you be never so short upon every one of them, the conjunction of many will make you prolix. “ Solet enim esse quædam partium brevitas quæ longam tamen efficit summam.” I make use of» that thought of Quintilian in another sense than he.—Art.Philistus.