DESCRIPTION, in rhetoric, is uses to designate such a strong and lively rep resentation of any object as places it before the reader in a clear and satisfac tory light. The execution of this task, as is universally admitted, is attended with great difficulty, and requires no or dinary powers. Indeed, such is the im portance which seine critics of eminence attach to the possession of this quality, that they have erected it into a. standard whereby to estimate the productions of genius in every department of literature; and though such a test may seem some what arbitrary, yet when we consider the powers indispensably requisite to form a good description, we shall not be sur prised to find that amid the galaxy of brilliant productions in other depart ments with which our literature is adorn ed, there are so few aathors who have attained eminence in this. A good de scription, is simple and concise ; it sets before us such features of an object as on the first View strike and warm the fancy ; it gives us ideas which a statuary or a painter could lay hold of and work after them—one of the strongest and most de cisive trials of the real merits of descrip tion. Bence among the qualities essen tially necessary, and without which, in deed, even mediocrity is unattainable in this walk of literature, are an eye con versant with nature in all her aspects, a strong imagination wherewith to catch her grand and prominent features, and great simplicity and clearness of style to transmit the impression unimpaired to the imagination of others. There is no
species of composition, prose or poetical, into which description does not enter in some shape ; but the term has been bor rowed from literature generally, and ap plied more particularly to those poetical productions which are devoted exelu tively to the description of nature, such us Milton's Allegro and Thomson's Sea tons. Renee, although Shakspeare may with great justice be styled a descriptive !met, from the exquisite descriptions of nature with which his unrivalled plays are interspersed ; yet as his chief excel tenet lies in portraying the character and passions of man, he does not properly speaking, within this category. By uo writer, either of antiquity or mod ern times, was the faculty of description possessed in a more eminent. degree than by Sir Walter Scott. All his delineations of natural scenery are executed with an unrivalled fervor of imagination: while at the same time they are marked by such traits of character and truth that every object is brought distinctly before the mind, and might without difficulty be transferred to canvass by the artist's pencil.