For the purpose of an argument, it is immaterial to me whether I have cause to praise or censure the style of Mr. Paine. It is a comparison of the known with the unknown, in which I am about to engage, and it is the _likeness_, not the merits, which I wish to bring out. A good or a bad style would not affect the similarity were either produced by the same hand. But it is a fact worthy of remark, as I am passing, that a bad style in writing or speaking, has never produced any marked effect upon the world. It is the nature of great minds to be possessed of clear ideas, and to such minds nature never withholds the gift of purity of diction.
The style of Mr. Paine is as peculiar as the great mind that produced it, and I will describe it to be: _strong, bold, clear, and harmonious_. The construction of any of his pieces, is like the building of a fine edifice. He never begins without plan and specifications. He builds it in the ideal before he puts it on paper. The reader finds a foundation fit and substantial in the first paragraph, often in the first sentence. Upon this he finds a superstructure to correspond, which in size and proportions, is neat and artistic, constructed with each separate material of the best kind, and in its proper place, never left without cornice and entablature, so that when taken all together it is most pleasing and useful. He never leaves a period like a broken column, yet a careless vine sometimes winds around it, to attract the mind from its stately proportions, and we have lost the argument in the beauty of the figure. But the effect is momentary. He soon brings us back to the practical and the real. And it is his peculiar beauty, that he does not impose ideas upon us which his language can not convey to the commonest understanding.
Mr. Jefferson says of his style: "No writer has exceeded Paine in familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language."
Style presents the _law_, as well as the image, of the writers' mind; in other words, style gives us the true portrait and habits of the mind, for the mind can by no means counterfeit itself. I will therefore proceed to an analysis and comparison of Mr. Paine's style with that of Junius; and, first, of the sentence, or period. The different members are of the same length, hence the rythm or harmony. Take the following examples, and I will place bars between the different members to aid the eye: