But how few of the modern writers have pursued the same manner of writing? Johnson's stile is a mixture of Latin and English; an intolerable composition of Latinity, affected smoothness, scholastic accuracy and roundness of periods. The benefits derived from his morality and his erudition, will hardly counterbalance the mischief done by his manner of writing. The names of a Robertson, a Hume, a Home and a Blair, almost silence criticism; but I must repeat what a very learned Scotch gentleman once acknowleged to me, "that the Scotch writers are not models of the pure English stile." Their stile is generally stiff, sometimes very awkward, and not always correct.[5] Robertson labors his stile and sometimes introduces a word merely for the sake of rounding a period. Hume has borrowed French idioms without number; in other respects he has given an excellent model of historical stile. Lord Kaims' manner is stiff; and Dr Blair, whose stile is less exceptionable in these particulars, has however introduced, into his writings, several foreign idioms and ungrammatical phrases. The Scotch writers now stand almost the first for erudition; but perhaps no man can write a foreign language with genuin purity. Gibbon's harmony of prose is calculated to delight our ears; but it is difficult to comprehend his meaning and the chain of his ideas, as fast as we naturally read; and almost impossible to recollect them, at any subsequent period. Perspicuity, the first requisite in stile, is sometimes sacrificed to melody; the mind of a reader is constantly dazzled by a glare of ornament, or charmed from the subject by the music of the language. As he is one of the _first_, it is hoped he may be the _last_, to attempt the gratification of our _ears_, at the expense of our _understanding_. Such however is the taste of the age; simplicity of stile is neglected for ornament, and sense is sacrificed to sound.[6] Altho stile, or the choice of words and manner of arranging them, may be necessarily liable to change, yet it does not follow that pronunciation and orthography cannot be rendered in a great measure permanent. An orthography, in which there would be a perfect correspondence between the spelling and pronunciation, would go very far towards effecting this desireable object. The Greek language suffered little or no change in these particulars, for about a thousand years; and the Roman was in a great degree fixed for several centuries.