Wesley Corpus

To Samuel Furly Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1764) Author: John Wesley --- [17] LIVERPOOL, July 15, 1764. DEAR SAMMY,--I have had many thoughts, since we parted, on the subject of our late conversation. I send you them just as they occur. 'What is it that constitutes a good style' Perspicuity and purity, propriety, strength, and easiness, joined together. Where any one of these is wanting, it is not a good style. Dr. Middleton's style wants easiness: it is stiff to an high degree. And stiffness in writing is full as great a fault as stiffness in behaviour. It is a blemish hardly to be excused, much less to be imitated. He is pedantic. 'It is pedantry,' says the great Lord Boyle, 'to use an hard word where an easier will serve.' Now, this the Doctor continually does, and that of set purpose. It is abundantly too artificial. Artis est celare artem ['It is the perfection of art to conceal itself.']; but his art glares in every sentence. He continually says, 'Observe how fine I speak!' Whereas a good speaker seems to forget he speaks at all. His full round curls naturally put one in mind of Sir Cloudesley Shovel's peruke, that 'eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.' [Pope's Moral Essays, iii. 295-6: 'That life-long wig which Gorgon's self might own, Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.'] Yet this very fault may appear a beauty to you, because you are apt to halt on the same foot. There is a stiffness both in your carriage and speech and something of it in your very familiarity. But for this very reason you should be jealous of yourself and guard against your natural infirmity. If you imitate any writer, let it be South, Atterbury, or Swift, in whom all the properties of a good writer meet. I was myself once much fonder of Prior than Pope; as I did not then know that stiffness was a fault. But what in all Prior can equal for beauty of style some of the first lines that Pope [Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.] ever published--