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natural connection with the leading proposition, ought not to have been included in the same sentence.

“Their march was through an uncultivated country, whose savage inhabitants fared hardly, having no other riches than a breed of lean sheep, whose flesh was rank and unsavory, by reason of their continual feeding upon sea-fish.'”

Another example may be given:

"Coningsby who had lost the key of his carpet-bag, which he finally cut open with a pen-knife that he found on his writing table, and the blade of which he broke in the operation, only reached the drawing-room as the figure of his grandfather, leaning on his ivory cane, and following his guests, was just visible in the distance. He1 was soon overtaken."' 2

The details about Coningsby's carpet-bag do not belong in the same sentence with the details of his arrival in the drawingroom. It would have been better to divide the sentence into two: the first enumerating the circumstances that detained Coningsby; the second ending with a general statement about the lateness of his arrival. This, of course, on the supposition that the particulars about the carpet-bag were worth mentioning at all.3 This sentence may also be deemed objectionable under Blair's first rule.4

"III. To avoid excess of parenthetical clauses.

"IV. Not to add members after a full and perfect close.

"Temple says of Fontenelle,' He falls so grossly into the censure of the old poetry, and preference of the new, that I could not read his strains without indignation; which no quality among men is so apt to raise in me as self-sufficiency.' This last clause is an extraneous addition to the sentence, which is naturally closed at indignation."

Another example may be given:

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Passing 5 now to the wind instruments, the exhibit of the French makers stands first, although it is small, they having sent none but first-class instruments; and they have captured nearly every prize, which is worthy of note, even if it is not a circumstance which is very creditable to native industry and intelligence.

1 See p. 72.

8 See p. 124.

6

See pp. 44, 72.

2 Disraeli: Coningsby, chap. v.
4 See p. 159.

997

5 See p. 42.

7 See p. 115. See also p. 187.

A writer who has mastered the foregoing rules will find that they will aid him to secure Unity in paragraphs and in the still longer divisions of a composition, as well as in sentences; but he cannot expect to acquire this difficult excellence in large measure, without making himself familiar with authors distinguished for method, and giving himself much practice in composition conducted with special reference to arrangement.

The four
requisites
of good
composition.

CHAPTER IV.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES.

THUS We have seen that to the efficiency of communication by language four things are necessary: Grammatical Purity (or Correctness), — the use of those expressions, and those only, which are accepted by the consentient practice of the speakers or writers of the present time who enjoy the best national reputation; Clearness (or Perspicuity), - the quality in style by which the meaning is conveyed to the person addressed, in appropriate words, as few as are compatible with completeness of statement, and arranged as nearly in the order of the thought as the language permits; Force, the quality that selects the most effective expressions and arranges them in the most effective manner; and Elegance (or Beauty), - conformity to good taste.

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While engaged in the act of composition, a writer should think little about Force, and not at all about positive Elegance; but he should constantly aim to make himself intelligible, sure that if he does not succeed in doing this, other merits will be of little avail, and that if he does succeed, other merits will be likely to come unsought. To this end, he should obtain as extensive a command of language as possible.

"When discoursing in public, let your choice of words be neither tainted with indelicacy, nor tarnished with affectation. Let your word bear the express image of your thought, and transmit it com

plete to your hearer's mind. You need then give yourself very little concern to inquire for the parish register of its nativity. Whether new or old, whether of Saxon or of Grecian parentage, it will perform its duties to your satisfaction, without at all impairing your reputation for purity of speech." 1

He should seek to conform to Swift's definition of a good style: "Proper words in proper places;" and to the rules by which "any one," as Locke says, "may preserve himself from the confines and suspicion of jargon":

"My lord, the new way of ideas, and the old way of speaking intelligibly, was always, and ever will be, the same. And if I may take the liberty to declare my sense of it, herein it consists: (1) That a man use no words but such as he makes the signs of certain determined objects of his mind in thinking, which he can make known to another. (2) Next that he use the same word steadily for the sign of the same immediate object of his mind in thinking. (3) That he join those words together in propositions, according to the grammatical rules of that language he speaks in. (4) That he unite those sentences in a coherent discourse." 2

The question remains whether, under the general considerations that have been suggested and the rules that have been laid down, any fundamental principle exists.

Spencer's

theory.

Herbert Spencer maintains that such a principle is to be found in what he calls "economy of attention." He thinks that the sufficient reason for choosing the best words for the purpose in hand and arranging them in the best order is, that the reader's attention, being thus subjected to the least possible strain from the machinery of language, can be more closely given to the thought; that, therefore, the best

1 J. Q. Adams: Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, lect. xxv. p. 159. 2 Locke: Works, vol. iv. p. 430; Second Reply to the Bishop of Worcester.

writer is he who, other things being equal, draws least upon a reader's mental powers and sensibilities.

Its

This theory is very well as far as it goes; but it does not lay sufficient stress upon the fact that insufficiency. a reader's mental power is not a constant quantity; that, therefore, a writer who increases this power by stimulating mental action arrives, by a different road, at the same destination which is reached by another writer who by a wise economy prevents unnecessary waste. The superiority of the metaphor to the simile,1 and of a suggestive to an "exhaustive" style,2 lies, as has been shown, in each case-partly, at least -in the stimulating power of the former; and the same may be said of the superiority of "words that burn" over those of the cold understanding, and of an orderly over a loose arrangement.

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The greatest genius of all is, of course, he who economizes a reader's attention at the same time that he stimulates his energies: Dante, for instance, "whose verse holds itself erect by the mere force of the substantive and verb, without the help of a single epithet," 3 but who "knew how to spend as well as to spare. His simile of the doves (Inferno, v. 82 et seq.), perhaps the most exquisite in all poetry, quite oversteps Rivarol's narrow limit of substantive and verb."4 Another principle which underlies all rhetorical rules is (as has been hinted more than once in the foregoing pages 5) the principle of all art, the principle of Unity in design conjoined with manifold Variety in methods.

Unity with
Variety.

1 See p. 91.

2 See pp. 125, 127.

3 Rivarol, quoted by J. R. Lowell: Among my Books (Second Series), p. 38. 4 Lowell: Ibid., p. 40.

5 See pp. 111, 157, 159. See also p. 186

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