REFLECTIONS UPON ACCURACY OF STYLE. Containing. The Chief Rules to be observ'd for obtaining an Accurate Style.of The Use of Metaphors.Of Affection in Style.Of the Use of Foreign Words.Of the Long Style.[and etc. etc.]

Early issue. 8vo, bound in contemporary polished calf, the covers with gilt ruled borders, the spine with raised bands separating the compartments, gilt ruled panels within the compartments. xvi, 246, [2 ads.] pp. A well preserved copy, crisp and clean within, the binding with some expected wear from time but solid and tight and still quite handsome and honest. A SCARCE EARLY ENGLISH WORK ON STYLE AND COMMUNICATION. Constable pens at the end of his preface that he knows himself to be very far from having avoided the faults he has observed in others. "We often, no less in writing than in morals, see what ought to be done, while in these we will not, and in those we cannot perform it ourselves. And in fine, I have in this kind what Cicero calls so unsatiable an ear, that it always desires, even where it's pleased the most, something still more perfect." 'Constable offers the most thorough English defense of the style lyric poets adopted in order to produce wonder. Because written in the form of a series of dialogues, Constable's work presents arguments both for and against "metaphysical" style, although the author's sympathies are always clear: within the course of the dialogues the author's mouthpiece, Eudoxus, converts Cleander and Critomachus to his view, making them over in his image as champions of the accuracy or correctness of style then prevalent.Although directed specifically against the prose style of Callicrates, Constable's work touches on both poetry and prose, drawing its examples from both.' j. Biester, George Herbert Journal(Vol. 22, Issue 1-2).…