Note 1183 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 7)

Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 219) thus writes of his own style:—'The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise. Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation; three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect.' See ante, p. 36, note 1.