where it is easy, will bring his readers to the end without unnecessary fatigue. The second of the two sentences which follow, tells a person of average intelligence all that is said at length in the first one: - "On receiving this message, he arose from his chair, put on his coat and hat, took his umbrella, went downstairs, walked to the railway station, bought a ticket for Plymouth, and started in the eleven o'clock train." "On receiving this message, he started for Plymouth by the eleven o'clock train." 1 It might be difficult to find in a reputable author a sentence (short enough to quote) so painfully prolix as the above; but every one who has read aloud a novel of Dickens or of Anthony Trollope, - not to speak of inferior writers, — has experienced the effect of prolixity, though he may not have recognized the cause. "Who can apportion out and dovetail his incidents, characters, and de- scriptive morsels, so as to fit them all exactly into six hundred and eighty pages, without either compressing them unnaturally, or extending them artificially at the end of his labor?" 2 style. An expression that suggests a scene or a thought, while not less clear than a statement in de- A suggestive tail, is far more forcible, as a man sees more for himself in a moment than he can learn from pages of description. Much time may be saved to both writer and reader by the division of a discourse into paragraphs Value of exactly corresponding to the larger divisions paragraphs. of the subject in hand. Every important transition 1 Quintilian has illustrated this point in a similar way: "Solet enim quaedam esse partium brevitas, quae longam tamen efficit summam. In portum veni, navem prospexi, quanti veheret interrogavi, de pretio convenit, conscendi, sublatae sunt ancorae, solvimus oram, profecti sumus. Nihil horum dici celerius potest, sed sufficit dicere [:] e portu navigavi. Et quotiens exitus rei satis ostendit priora, debemus hoc esse contenti, quo reliqua intelleguntur.”. Inst. Orator. iv. ii. xli. See, also, J. Q. Adams: Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, lect. xviii. 422. 2 Anthony Trollope Barchester Towers, vol. ii. chap. xxiv. See, too, p. 160. being thus marked by a break in the page, it is easy to follow the main line of thought. If, on the other hand, an essay is not divided into paragraphs, or is divided at the wrong places, a reader will get on much more slowly than usual, and with much more fatigue. An apt quotation, at the same time that it gives Value of apt the weight of authority and perhaps also the quotations. charm of association to a thought, briefly suggests what many additional words would not fully express. Other devices Antithesis enables one to economize space by the help which each of two contrasted words gives to for brevity. the other; Climax,2 by increasing interest in proportion to the time spent and the energy expended; Variety in language and in construction, by preventing the lassitude which comes from monotony. "A particular statement, example, or proverb, of which the general application is obvious, will often save a long abstract rule, which needs much explanation and limitation; and will thus suggest much that is not actually said: thus answering the purpose of a mathematical diagram, which, though itself an individual, serves as a representative of a class. Slight hints also respecting the subordinate branches of any subject, and notices of the principles that will apply to them, &c., may often be substituted for digressive discussions, which, though laboriously compressed, would yet occupy a much greater space.' 994 One well-chosen word may say more than a sentence; one well-arranged sentence may dispense with a paragraph; and a dash may be eloquent : "If you should transfer the amount of your reading day by day from the newspaper to the standard authors — But who dare speak of such a thing?" 5 4 Whately: Rhetoric, part iii. chap. ii. sect. ix. 8 See p. 161. "Richter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a kind of 'Light-chafers,' large Fireflies, which people stick upon spits, and illuminate the ways with at night. Persons of condition can thus travel with a pleasant radiance which they much admire. Great honor to the Fireflies! But-!"1 Skill in selection of particulars. The success of a suggestive style depends, of course, upon the skilful selection of those particulars which bring the rest at once and inevitably to mind. A circumstance which, though trivial in itself, stands for other circumstances more important, -one, for instance, which implies the existence of a cause for itself and for numerous other effects, may flash upon the mind more than pages of detail could communicate.2 "In his [Burke's] illustrations no less than in the body of his work, few things are more remarkable than his exquisite instinct of selection, an instinct which seems almost confined to the French and the English mind. It is the polar opposite of what is now sometimes called, by a false application of a mathematical term, exhaustiveness, formerly much practised by the Germans, and consisting, to use the happy phrase of Goldsmith, in a certain manner of 'writing the subject to the dregs;' saying all that can be said on a given subject, without considering how far it is to the purpose; and valuing facts because they are true, rather than because they are significant." 3 tive" style By a suggestive style is, of course, meant a style that is suggestive to the person addressed. The cir- A "suggescumstance that "the fox looked out of the must suggest. window" at Balclutha would not represent desolation to one who knew nothing about foxes. Byron's "Niobe of Nations" would tell nothing about Rome to one who had never heard the story of Niobe. The word Athens 2 See pp. 174, 241. 1 Carlyle: Heroes and Hero-worship, lect. v.; Burns. says much more to one man than could be learned by another from a summary of Grecian History, or even from a sight of the Parthenon and the Acropolis. In trying not to be prolix, one should beware of the opposite extreme, should avoid ellipses that it is difficult to bridge, compression that takes the life out of language, laborious conciseness of every kind; but even into these faults a verbose writer often falls. Impatient himself of his slow progress, he tries to get on faster, but only succeeds in omitting, not what his readers may be presumed to know, but what he knows best himself. Misplaced brevity. Brevity is not, however, as some seem to think, the one thing needful in writing. The shortest word, sentence, or paragraph is not necessarily the best one. Economy in syllables is not always true economy. The very author who lays it down as "an axiom that languor is the cause or the effect of most disorders," also says: "It is silly to argue that we gain ground by shortening on all occasions the syllables of a sentence. Half a minute, if indeed so much is requisite, is well spent in clearness, in fulness, and pleasurableness of expression, and in engaging the ear to carry a message to the understanding.” 1 1 Landor: Works, vol. iv. pp. 50, 51. Quintilian has a sentence to the same effect: "Fortasse ubique, in narratione tamen praecipue, media haec tenenda sit via dicendi, quantum opus est, et quantum satis est. Quantum opus est autem non ita solum accipi volo, quantum ad indicandum sufficit, quia non inornata debet esse brevitas, alioqui sit indocta; nam et fallit voluptas et minus longa quae delectant videntur, ut amoenum ac molle iter, etiamsi est spatii amplioris, minus fatigat quam durum aridumque conpendium." — Inst. Orator. iv. ii. xlv. CHAPTER III. ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS. SUCCESS in either spoken or written discourse depends even more upon the order in which words are arranged than upon their choice or their number. In an ideal arrangement, the position of every verbal sign The ideal would exactly correspond to that of the thing arrangement. signified; the order of the language would be the order of the thought, and would distinctly indicate the relative importance of every constituent part of the composition. "If conformity between words and their meaning be agreeable, it must of course be agreeable to find the same order or arrangement in both." Of this ideal arrangement no human language is susceptible; but a writer should aim to come as near the ideal as is permitted by the limitations of the language in which he writes. 1 Value of I. Clearness and Force may often be gained by Antithesis, the setting over against each other of contrasted or opposed ideas, expressed in lan- Antithesis. guage that brings out the contrast most forcibly, word corresponding to word, clause to clause, construction to construction. The principle is the same with that which makes a white object appear whiter and a black one blacker if the black and the white are placed side by side, particularly if they are similar in size and are looked at from a similar point of view. In both cases, 1 Lord Kames: Elements of Criticism, chap. xviii. sect. ii. 8 See p. 137. |