the
most wretched compositions!--

And any lines prove pleasing, when you write.

Sometimes the caligrapher is a sort of hero:--

To you, you rare commander of the quill,
Whose wit and worth, deep learning, and high skill,
Speak you the honour of Great Tower Hill!

The last line became traditionally adopted by those who were so lucky as
to live in the neighbourhood of this Parnassus. But the reader must form
some notion of that charm of caligraphy which has so bewitched its
professors, when,

Soft, bold, and free, your manuscripts still please.

How justly bold in SNELL'S improving hand
The pen at once joins freedom with command!
With softness strong, with ornaments not vain,
Loose with proportion, and with neatness plain;
Not swell'd, not full, complete in every part,
And artful most, when not affecting art.

And these describe those pencilled knots and flourishes, "the angels,
the men, the birds, and the beasts," which, as one of them observed, he
could

Command
Even by the _gentle motion of his hand_,

all the _speciosa miracula_ of caligraphy;

Thy _tender strokes_, inimitably fine,
Crown with perfection every _flowing line_;
And to each _grand performance_ add a grace,
As _curling hair_ adorns a beauteous face:
In every page _new fancies_ give delight,
And _sporting round the margin_ charm the sight.

One Massey, a writing-master, published in 1763, "The Origin and
Progress of Letters." The great singularity of this volume is "a new
species of biography never attempted before in English." This consists
of the lives of "English Penmen," otherwise writing-masters! If some
have foolishly enough imagined that the sedentary lives of authors are
void of interest from deficient incident and interesting catastrophe,
what must they think of the barren labours of those who, in the degree
they become eminent, to use their own style, in the art of "dish, dash,
long-tail fly," the less they become interesting to the public; for what
can the most skilful writing-master do but wear away his life in leaning
over his pupil's copy, or sometimes snatch a pen to decorate the margin,
though he cannot compose the page? Montaigne has a very original notion
on writing-masters: he says that some of those caligraphers who had
obtained promotion by their excellence in the art, afterwards _affected
to write carelessly, lest their promotion should be suspected to ha