This expression includes two persons, one acquiring, and one inculcating; and the scene is changed without necessity. To avoid this blemish, the thought may be expressed thus: That sort of instruction which is afforded by inculcating, _&c._ The bad effect of this change of person is remarkable in the following passage. The _Britains_, daily harassed by cruel inroads from the Picts, were forced to call in the Saxons for their defence, _who_ consequently reduced the greatest part of the island to their own power, drove the Britains into the most remote and mountainous parts, and _the rest of the country_, in customs, religion, and language, became wholly Saxons. _Letter to the Lord High Treasurer. Swift._ The following example is a change from subject to persons. _This prostitution of praise_ is not only a deceit upon the gross of mankind, who take their notion of characters from the learned; but also _the better sort_ must by this means lose some part at least of that desire of fame which is the incentive to generous actions, when they find it promiscuously bestowed on the meritorious and undeserving. _Guardian_, Nº 4. Even so slight a change as to vary the construction in the same period, is unpleasant: Annibal luce prima, Balearibus levique alia armatura præmissa, transgressus flumen, ut quosque traduxerat, ita in acie locabat; Gallos Hispanosque equites prope ripam lævo in cornu adversus Romanum equitatum; dextrum cornu Numidis equitibus datum. _Tit. Liv. l. 22. § 46._ Speaking of Hannibal’s elephants drove back by the enemy upon his own army: Eo magis ruere in suos belluæ, tantoque majorem stragem edere quam inter hostes ediderant, quanto acrius pavor consternatam agit, quam insidentis magistri imperio regitur. _Liv. l. 27. § 14._ This passage is also faulty in a different respect, that there is no resemblance betwixt the members of the expression, though they import a comparison. The present head, which relates to the choice of materials, shall be closed with a rule concerning the use of copulatives. Longinus observes, that it animates a period to drop the copulatives; and he gives the following example from Xenophon. Closing their shields together, they were push’d, they fought, they slew, they were slain. _Treatise of the Sublime, cap. 16._