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It is this putting of old words in a new light, and to a new use, though that will be often the oldest of all, on which Horace sets so high a store: Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum Reddiderit junctura novum; and not less Montaigne: 'The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off a language; not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and various service, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to this.
He admits having made ample use of the three principal versions that preceded his, namely, those of Jonathan Scott, Lane and Payne, "the whole being blended by a callida junctura into a homogeneous mass."
On what Boswell quoted he would have commented with perfect freedom; and the borrowed passages, so selected, and accompanied by such comments, would have become original. They would have dovetailed into the work. No hitch, no crease, would have been discernible. The whole would appear one and indivisible. "Ut per laeve severos Effundat junctura ungues." This is not the case with Mr.
To the same cause we may attribute the want of plan. Plato had not the command of his materials which would have enabled him to produce a perfect work of art. Hence there are several new beginnings and resumptions and formal or artificial connections; we miss the 'callida junctura' of the earlier dialogues.