His mode of reasoning is singularly elliptical,--in reality most consecutive,--yet in appearance often incoherent.

His meaning, in itself sufficiently perplexing, is compressed into the fewest possible words.

His great fondness for antithetical expression has not a little conduced to this effect.

Every one must have observed how much more the sense is condensed in the verses of Pope and his imitators, who never ventured to continue the same clause from couplet to couplet, than in those of poets who allow themselves that license.

Every artificial division, which is strongly marked, and which frequently recurs, has the same tendency.