This style may be called the _terrifick_, for its chief intention is to terrify and amaze; it may be termed the _repulsive_, for its natural effect is to drive away the reader; or it may be distinguished, in plain English, by the denomination of the _bugbear style_, for it has more terrour than danger, and will appear less formidable as it is more nearly approached.
A mother tells her infant, that _two and two make four_; the child remembers the proposition, and is able to count four to all the purposes of life, till the course of his education brings him among philosophers, who fright him from his former knowledge, by telling him, that four is a certain aggregate of units; that all numbers being only the repetition of an unit, which, though not a number itself, is the parent, root, or original of all number, _four_ is the denomination assigned to a certain number of such repetitions. The only danger is, lest, when he first hears these dreadful sounds, the pupil should run away; if he has but the courage to stay till the conclusion, he will find that, when speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.
An illustrious example of this species of eloquence may be found in "Letters concerning Mind." The author begins by declaring, that "the sorts of things are things that now are, have been, and shall be, and the things that strictly _are_." In this position, except the last clause, in which he uses something of the scholastick language, there is nothing but what every man has heard, and imagines himself to know. But who would not believe that some wonderful novelty is presented to his intellect, when he is afterwards told, in the true bugbear style, that "the _ares_, in the former sense, are things that lie between the _have-beens_ and _shall-bes_. The _have-beens_ are things that are past; the _shall-bes_ are things that are to come; and the things that _are_, in the latter sense, are things that have not been, nor shall be, nor stand in the midst of such as are before them, or shall be after them. The things that _have been_, and _shall be_, have respect to present, past, and future.
"Those likewise that now _are_ have moreover place; that, for instance, which is here, that which is to the east, that which is to the west."