The style of writing of both of them approaches to
the simplest way of saying things. Elia employed the choicest language
of the seventeenth century, and the divine used the plainest English of
the day. The perpetual danger of literature is of becoming rhetorical;
and hardly fares vigor of thought when long words and periods are
preferred to short ones, and when the native shape and properties of
ideas are less cared for than the abundant drapery. The style of the
"Essays of Elia" is as admirable as their fancy. The author hated a
formal sentence as much as he disliked stately and insipid society.
Unlike Thomas Carlyle, in avoiding the faults of rhetorical culture, he
did not become a literary barbarian. In refusing to comb his hair like a
prig, he did not go to the extreme of making himself horridly uncomely.
His sentences are unsurpassed for neatness, are as graceful as they are
quaint and clear. The writings of Sydney Smith rarely attain the
perfect grace which uniformly distinguishes Elia; yet he never attempts
magnificence, and he so unites brilliancy and plainness as to make his
statements seem equally felicitous to the rude and the scholarly ear.
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