inelegances

Updated: June 28, 2025

Middleton, in his "Life of Cicero," though a man of classical taste, and an historian of a classical era, could not preserve himself from colloquial inelegances; the greatest characters are levelled by the poverty of his style. Warburton, and his imitator Hurd, and other living critics of that school, are loaded with familiar idioms, which at present would debase even the style of conversation.

Isaac Disraeli - Literary Character of Men of Genius: Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions