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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
8 th . 4 Last night . ' Well , and what then ? When should you expect thieves to come but at night ? You can ' t suddenly change the arrangements and constitutions of the social fabric . The man turns out with his wimble and his crow-bar , and the frail Cyprian , * hastening to her nightly jobs , robs fobs : ' such things are , and so must they remain a little longer . Have a little patience ,, and allow the reformed parliament a few more sessions to wrangle , to sleep , to blunder , or to dissemble , before they reform the morals and condition of the country ; and don ' t , in the mean time , expect impossibilities . And then , as to the term last night , how admirably this indicates the vigilance of the police . If it had been the night before , there would have been no occasion for the advertisement , for most assuredl y the thieves would all have been in safe custody . 9 th . « And . &c .
One can ' t sufficiently admire the simplicity and connexion of the whole paragraph . It is evidently the production of experience combined with intelligence and dispatch . Having so briefly , and yet so copiously , and may we not add , so eloquently related the introductory facts , without parade or circumlocution ; the practised and masterly writer now proceeds to the consequences , beginning
with the impressive and significant conjunction—and . He might have said , ' consequently , ' ' therefore , ' assuredly , ' &c , in imitation of the generality of less gifted authors , in choosing long , pompous , high-sounding , and abstruse words , in preference to short ones ; but disdaining such artificial clap-traps , he leaves it to the manly and sterling sense of his readers , to draw their own conclusions from the most simple and energetic style .
10 th . * They robbed it . ' Can there be any shadow of a doubt , any demur in the most sceptical mind , who are meant by this expression ; not less rich in its brevity than in its force ? A whole sentence in thus winding up the catastrophe expressed by a single word , and that
too of only one syllable . A lawyer , ever in quest of fees and tautology , might be allowed to say—the aforesaid thieves , rascals , plunderers , knaves , scoundrels , gaol-birds , miscreants , —these , and a score more epithets , might swell and adorn his folios ; but the plain and emphatic word—they , beats them all hollow .
Robbed it . —Perhaps , after all these liberal and erudite commendations on the unquestionable merits of the composition , there may here be a little redundancy ; but let the faultless critic ' throw the first stone / for , Whoe ' er expects a perfect work to see , Expects what never was , nor e ' er will be .
Robbed it—yes , you may be sure they did , without your being informed of * it ; what else could be their object ? Children of nature , though they may be , and disdaining the arbitrary laws and
Untitled Article
Mr . BlytKs Garden . 497
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1834, page 497, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2635/page/37/
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